Deciding whether to test student athletes for drug use

The athletic governing board of Santa Clara University had to decide whether to recommend implementing a drug-testing program for intercollegiate athletes. The author presented a decision-analytic model of the question to the board, which served as the focus of the board’s deliberations. The delibrations were concerned with evaluating the parameters of the model: the prior probability that an athlete uses drugs, the reliability of the tests for drug usage, and the relative costs of testing errors. These deliberations and the model were the basis of the board’s decision not to recommend implementing the testing program.