Questionnaire development for a longitudinal study of gamblers - phase 1
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This research was jointly commissioned by the Gambling
Commission, the National Lottery Commission and the Responsibility
in Gambling Trust and undertaken by NatCen. The purpose of the
work was to identify a set of questions that could be used in any
future longitudinal study of gambling behaviour.
The research focused on a set of research questions relating to
reasons why people gamble and how to capture information about
reasons why people change their gambling behaviour. The project was
undertaken in two phases, this is the report of the first phase of
the project, and is largely methodological in nature, as the
primary concern of this piece of work was to consider how to assess
people's motivations for gambling and reasons for changing
behaviour in a quantitative way.
The full report can be found at:
Questionnaire development for a longitudinal study of gamblers -
phase 1
The second stage of
the project pre-tested a set of questionnaire instruments relating
to the research questions identified by this report, using a small
sample of gamblers (43) who had taken part in both the
British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2007 (BGPS 2007) and
the Qualitative Follow-up of BGPS 2007.
Key findings of phase 1
Any longitudinal study of gamblers will invariably have a number
of research questions it wishes to address. The authors of
the report considered that two key research questions which would
be highly likely to form part of the basis of any longitudinal
research on gamblers were:
- assessing people's motivations for gambling
- examining the reasons or triggers which make gamblers, and even
non-gamblers, change their gambling behaviour.
The key aim of this piece of work was to assess what
questionnaire items and methods could be used to accurately capture
this information by:
- a) undertaking a desk based review of international literature
and data collection methods in these areas
- b) performing secondary analysis of existing qualitative data
to assess whether the themes and methods identified from the desk
based review are representative of gamblers within the UK and to
highlight potential gaps in knowledge emerging from the review
stage.
Following this two stage process, the authors recommended that
the following questions and instruments be included within the
second (question testing) phase of the project:
- Age of first gambling experience.
- Facilitator of first gambling experience.
- Outcome of first gambling experience.
- Reasons for starting to gamble.
- Gambling Motivations Questionnaire (subject to the amendments
outlined in Table 4 of the report).
- Changes in gambling behaviour since last interview.
- Reasons for changes in gambling behaviour.
Page last reviewed: June
2011