Anti-doping literacy scale (ADL-S): development and validation of a French language instrument based on the doping awareness literacy framework.

Doping prevention has increasingly shifted toward education as a central strategy for promoting clean sport. This evolution reflects a growing consensus that effective prevention must go beyond the transmission of rules and sanctions and instead develop athletes' competencies to make informed, autonomous, and ethically grounded decisions. Doping Awareness Literacy (DAL) framework defines anti-doping literacy as comprising three complementary dimensions: (1) functional literacy (i.e., knowledge of anti-doping rules and associated health risks); (2) interactive literacy (i.e., ability to use this information in training and social contexts); and (3) critical literacy (i.e., capacity to evaluate information and resist doping-related pressures). Despite its theoretical relevance, validated instruments assessing specifically these dimensions remain scarce, particularly in non-English-speaking contexts. The study aimed to develop and validate the Anti-Doping Literacy Scale (ADL-S), a French-language instrument based on the DAL framework, designed to provide both general anti-doping literacy and domain-specific literacy competencies. 265 adult athletes participated in a four-phase validation process: (1) Phase 1 involved item generation based on the DAL model and international anti-doping education guidelines, followed by expert review to ensure content validity and conceptual clarity; (2) Phase 2 examined the factorial structure and internal consistency using confirmatory factor analyses; (3) Phase 3 explored ADL-S external correlates through associations with psychosocial constructs relevant to doping, including moral disengagement and resistive self-regulatory efficacy; (4) Phase 4 evaluated test-retest reliability over time. Final version of ADL-S comprises 21 items distributed across three subscales reflecting functional, interactive, and critical anti-doping literacy. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a bifactor structure, indicating the coexistence of a general anti-doping literacy factor and specific subdimensions, with satisfactory model fit indices and internal reliability coefficients. Exploratory analyses showed negative associations with moral disengagement and positive associations with resistive self-regulatory efficacy, consistent with theoretical expectations. Test-retest analyses demonstrated satisfactory temporal stability. Overall, ADL-S shows robust psychometric properties and provides a theoretically grounded tool for assessing anti-doping literacy in French-speaking athletic populations. Beyond measurement, this instrument offers practical value for evaluating and guiding education-based prevention programmes aligned with international anti-doping standards, supporting the development of informed, autonomous, and health-protective decision-making among athletes.