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We have refined new survey questions aimed at collecting better data on the experience of gambling-related harms in the upcoming Gambling Survey for Great Britain.
Published: 23 November 2023
Last updated: 23 November 2023
This version was printed or saved on: 20 May 2024
Online version: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/qualitative-follow-up-interviews-with-participants-from-the-gambling-survey
This qualitative research aimed to support interpretation of survey data captured on gambling-related harms, through follow-up interviews with participants who took part in the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) Experimental Statistics Phase. Gambling-related harms are defined as adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. These harms impact people’s resources, relationships and health.1
The GSGB Experimental Statistics Phase piloted new survey questions about gambling harms, including harms related to own gambling and harms related to someone else’s gambling. Some survey participants were asked to respond to the harms questions on a binary scale (response options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’), while others were asked to respond on a four-point scale (response options: ‘never’, ‘occasionally’, ‘fairly often’ and ‘very often’).2
This research sought to better understand:
This report presents findings from 16 in-depth, qualitative interviews with people who took part in the survey and had experienced gambling-related harms. Interviews took place in June and July 2023, were conducted over the telephone or Microsoft Teams, transcribed and analysed to identify themes.
Participants discussed positive and negative impacts of their own gambling and/or the gambling of others (family, friends or partners) but tended to focus on gambling-related harms rather than the positive elements of their experience. It should be noted that participants were chosen for this research due to their experience of gambling-related harm. Therefore, this group may be more likely to highlight the negative impacts of gambling compared to people who have experienced less or no harm. Participants did not describe any impacts neutrally. Even where impacts were small and infrequent participants felt there was some effect on their lives. While this research focuses on gambling-related harms, the GSGB will cover wider impacts of gambling and motivations for gambling behaviours.
Financial impacts of gambling were a common experience for participants in this research. Financial impacts related to someone’s own gambling ranged from occasional instances of cutting back on non-essential spending (such as social events) to losing a home due to failure to pay the mortgage. Some participants with friends or family members who gambled were also financially impacted, usually because they had lent money to someone who had incurred gambling losses. While some of these participants were minimally impacted or only felt ‘annoyance’, these loans required others to reduce their own spending, incur debt or other negative financial consequences.
Participants impacted by their own or someone else’s gambling also experienced impacts on their relationships and/or social life and wellbeing. While some participants who gambled felt it could be a fun social activity, this group also experienced conflict related to gambling and negative feelings due to having concealed gambling and/or losses from people close to them. Participants impacted by their own and/or someone else’s gambling suffered from stress, anxiety and feelings of isolation.
Participants described ‘occasional’ harms using a variety of frequencies, ranging from the harm being experienced multiple times per month, to the harm being experienced once in the year. There was also variation in the ways in which these harms impacted participants’ lives. While some participants felt minimal impacts from ‘occasional’ harms, there were also examples of more serious impacts.
Despite differences between participants in their interpretation of ‘occasional’ harms, they generally interpreted the response options consistently across different questions and there were no clear patterns related to participants responding to certain survey questions differently.
Use of the ‘occasionally’ option covered harms that occurred with some regularity, but which the participant did not consider frequent or serious enough to be covered by the ‘fairly often’ response. However, participants expressed different views about what level of frequency and seriousness should be considered ‘occasional’. These perceptions were informed by a number of factors, including earlier experiences of gambling harms, proximity to harm and circumstances at the time of completing the survey.
Harms which were very infrequent were also captured under the ‘occasionally’ option because this was the lowest frequency of harm available to select. Some participants experiencing this level of harm felt that an additional response option between ‘never’ and ‘occasionally’ (for example, ‘rarely’) may have more accurately captured their experience.
In some cases, participants were clear that ‘occasional’ experience of a harm was less impactful than a harm experienced ‘fairly or very often’. Many participants had experienced gambling harms over a long period of time and were able to point to more difficult times in their lives when they would have defined harms as occurring ‘fairly or very often’.
Some ‘occasional’ harms discussed by participants had very minimal impacts on their lives, perhaps causing only some ‘annoyance’ or ‘frustration’ which affected them for a short amount of time. However, in some cases the frequency of the harm did not determine the impact. Harms which occurred ‘occasionally’ could have significant impacts if the level of harm was particularly high. Examples discussed by participants included irregular loaning of meaningful sums of money and consistently concealing gambling activities from people close to them through ‘occasional’ lies. This could lead to situations where, although the direct harm did not happen frequently, the effect could be significant and enduring.
Participants described a range of ways that harms interrelated, including similar types of harm being connected (for example, one financial harm leading to another financial harm) and the interrelation of different types of harm (for example, financial harm leading to relationship harm). Participants who had been impacted by someone else’s gambling experienced similar patterns of harms as those affected by their own gambling activity. Participants identified a number of relationships between gambling-related harms:
Participants also expressed that gambling harms do not exist in a vacuum, separate to other experiences in their lives. Experiences of harm were impacted by and related to external factors (for example, mental health or financial situation) and in many cases participants found it difficult to disentangle the impacts of these factors from the impacts of gambling harm.
Gambling-related harms are defined as the adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. Participants tended to express that experience of an ‘occasional’ harm was negative or adverse in some way, even where they felt the impacts were very minimal. Therefore, in line with the definition, it is clear that the ‘occasional’ response is capturing gambling-related harms.
However, in some limited cases the language used by participants to describe impacts (for example, “not significant”) could suggest that no harm has been experienced. In this research, these examples related to reducing spending on non-essential everyday purchases.
It should be acknowledged that the ‘occasional’ responses tend to involve some degree of harm. However, when presenting the data it will also be important to note that ‘occasional’ responses capture a range of impacts, with some being very minimal while others are more severe.
In some cases, participants said it was worse to experience a harm ‘fairly or very often’ than ‘occasionally’. However, ’occasional’ harms can be worse if they have significant or long-term impacts. It is important to distinguish between the frequency and impact of harms. An ‘occasional’ harm can be worse if it's impact is high.
If more detailed quantitative data collection is considered helpful for future surveys, the Gambling Commission could consider adding an additional option to capture very infrequent harms (for example, ‘rarely’), using specific defined frequencies in harms questions and/or including measures to capture the impacts of different frequencies of harms. Participants also highlighted the possibility of incorporating more measures of wellbeing or emotion (for example, anxiety or frustration) to fully understand the direct and long-term impacts of gambling-related harms.
Reflecting on their own experiences, participants described the impacts of gambling-related harms as difficult to measure. This was because harms were interrelated, often long-term and it could be hard to disentangle impacts related to gambling and other causes. This emphasises the importance of continued qualitative research to support interpretation (and give depth to) quantitative findings about gambling-related harms.
Minimising the time period between survey collection and follow-up interviews would aid this process, to help with participant recall. More interactive forms of qualitative research (such as diary studies or use of visual aids) could also help participants to make connections between different harms and discuss how these come together in their lived experience.
1Heather Wardle, Gerda Reith, David Best, David McDaid and Stephen Platt (2018). Measuring Gambling-related harms: a framework for action. Gambling Commission, Birmingham, UK.
2Developing survey questions to collect better data on gambling-related harms.
The Gambling Commission is developing a new survey approach to collecting gambling participation and gambling harms prevalence data in Great Britain. The latest stage of the study - the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) Experimental Statistics Phase3 – has involved refining and testing changes to the survey design.
In this phase, survey participants were asked questions to better understand their experiences of gambling and the effects of these experiences on their lives. This included new survey questions about participants’ exposure to gambling-related harms, comprising harms related to their own gambling and the gambling of others.4 Some survey participants were asked to respond to certain harms questions on a binary scale (response options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’), while others were asked to respond on a four-point scale (response options: ‘never’, ‘occasionally’, ‘fairly often’ and ‘very often’).
In this research, gambling-related harms (also referred to in this report as “harms”) are defined as the adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities, and society. These harms impact people’s resources, relationships and health. Harms can be experienced not just by people who gamble but also those who are connected to them including family, friends and employers; as well as communities and society more broadly.5
This qualitative research aimed to support interpretation of survey data captured on gambling-related harms, through follow-up interviews with participants from the Gambling Survey Experimental Statistics Phase. The research questions were:
In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 people from the Gambling Survey Experimental Phase. Participants were selected based on their survey responses, including at least one experience of an ‘occasional’ harm – this was our “primary sampling criteria”. Demographic factors and types of gambling and/or harms experienced were also monitored to try and ensure that this research involved people with diverse experiences – this was our “secondary sampling criteria”.
Survey participants who met the sampling criteria (and had agreed to be re-contacted) were sent an email inviting them to take part in an interview. If participants expressed interest, a short screening call was arranged to provide further information about the research, answer any questions and find a suitable time for an interview.
| Attribute | Number of participants | |
|---|---|---|
| Harm related to own gambling or gambling of others | ||
| Participant has experienced harm relating to their own gambling | 5 | |
| Participant has experienced harms related to gambling of others | 5 | |
| Participant has experienced harms relating both to own gambling and gambling of others | 6 | |
| Age | ||
| 18 to 34 | 4 | |
| 35 to 54 | 5 | |
| 55 or over | 7 | |
| Gender | ||
| Male | 13 | |
| Female | 3 | |
| Other or prefer not to say | 0 | |
| Ethnicity | ||
| White British or White Other | 12 | |
| Black British or Black Other | 0 | |
| Asian British or Asian Other | 4 | |
| Mixed or multiple | 0 | |
Interviews were conducted in June and July 2023, lasted up to 60 minutes, and took place over the phone or online (Microsoft Teams).
A topic guide was developed in collaboration with the Commission. A topic guide is a tool used for interviews which sets out key discussion topics. This ensures a consistent approach across interviews while allowing the discussion to remain participant led. The topic guide covered areas of interest for this research (for example, experience of harms identified as ‘occasional’ and relationships between different impacts of gambling).
This study was approved by NatCen’s Research Ethics Committee. The topics of gambling and gambling harm are potentially sensitive, so NatCen sought to reduce any risk of psychological harm for those taking part. All participants received an information sheet which set out the purpose of the research and explained what would happen to participant data. Participants were reminded of their right to withdraw before and during the interview. Participants were also signposted to a list of organisations that they could contact if the subject matter of the research prompted any upset or distress.
With permission, all interviews were recorded and transcribed to support analysis. Data was analysed and managed using the framework approach. In this approach, relevant information from each interview is written up into a framework, where each row represents one interview, and each column represents a research question or sub-question. This enables the research team to assess the evidence relevant to each question. Analysis explored the full range of experiences and views, interrogating data to identify similarities and differences between participants (for example, those impacted by their own gambling compared to someone else’s gambling) and seek to explain patterns and themes.
This report does not provide numerical findings, since qualitative research cannot support numerical analysis. Instead, the qualitative findings provide in-depth insights into the range of views and experiences of participants and verbatim quotes are used to illustrate these.
3 Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Experimental statistics stage
4 Developing survey questions to collect better data on gambling-related harms
5 Problem gambling vs gambling-related harms
6 This could include impacts on the participant and/or on others.
Participants discussed the impacts of their own gambling and/or the impacts of others’ gambling, and whether they perceived those impacts to be positive, negative or neutral.7 This section summarises the range of impacts described by participants, which are discussed in more detail in upcoming sections (which explore gambling-related harms experienced ‘occasionally’ and the interrelation of different harms).
When reviewing these impacts, it should be noted that this research focuses on gambling-related harms and participants were chosen due to their reported experience of these harms. In many cases, participants had experienced harms ‘occasionally’ and ‘very or fairly often’. Therefore, this group may be more likely to highlight the negative impacts of gambling than people who have suffered less or no harm (who may focus on more positive impacts). The sample for this research also did not include survey participants who may have experienced the most serious experiences of harm (answering ‘very or fairly often’ to all applicable harms). This section does not intend to provide an exhaustive summary of the impacts of gambling, but rather to illustrate the range of impacts experienced by participants in this research to provide context for the findings in upcoming sections.
Within this sample of participants, financial impacts of gambling were experienced more commonly than other types of impacts (relationships and health).8 Participants discussed a range of positive and negative financial impacts related to their own gambling. When discussing positive impacts, participants mentioned enjoying a “buzz” when they won and purchasing material goods (for example, cars) and experiences (for example, holidays) with winnings. However, these participants tended to feel that the potential of financial gain did not offset the negative impacts they had experienced.
“I don't think there was any positives I really got through it. I'd feel a little bit of a buzz when I'd, if I'd won, but that would quickly be replaced by a low of losing and the buzz wasn't any more than if I'd just watched my team play and win. It was just fleeting.”
Male participant aged 35 to 54 years old, who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
The negative financial consequences identified by participants were wide-ranging. As captured in their survey responses, participants reported reducing their spending on everyday items such as groceries and bus fares. Participants also reduced spending on items which were not essential but would have been enjoyable, such as social outings with their friends, clothes or concert tickets. Some participants felt the impacts of this were not significant. However, for others this led to reduced opportunities for socialising, frustration at missing out on opportunities and feelings of guilt (for example, guilt about having less money for family activities).
Some participants had used money from their savings to gamble, which could have been used on a wedding, renovating a house or reinvested in a participant’s business. In other cases, participants described borrowing money from friends or taking out credit cards to pay for the everyday expenses they could not afford due to gambling losses. One participant had asked work clients for early and/or advance payment to cover debts incurred by their gambling losses. Amongst the more severe financial impacts, the inability to pay off loans and bills had led to more serious impacts such as participants falling behind on mortgage payments or losing their home.
Participants reported negative impacts related to work and school performance, including being late or distracted from their work or study, missing school or work to gamble or to sleep after a night spent gambling. However, one participant (who experienced financial harms) felt that overall gambling had a positive impact on work performance because they were more motivated to earn money to offset financial losses.
"After a bad time at gambling and you’ve lost your money, it’s hard to work because it’s just going through your mind. You can’t think, you are stressed, and it’s difficult.”
Male participant aged over 55 years old, who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
Participants felt that their gambling had negatively impacted the quality of their social connections and relationships. In some cases, this was because participants had not been truthful with others about the extent of their gambling out of embarrassment or to avoid conflict. Other participants identified that gambling activities led them to reduce the amount of time they spent with family or friends. Some participants also described situations of direct conflict, including frictions in friendships (when they won or lost more than the friends they were gambling with), or arguments with friends and family who were worried about their gambling.
“My mum actually, she'll turn round and say to me, 'What are you doing? You're an idiot,' trying to get me to open my eyes. …Yes, conflict is a big issue. It's just my mum worrying about me.”
Male participant aged 18 to 34 years old who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
Participants also discussed a variety of impacts related to their mental health and wellbeing. This included anxiety (due to monetary losses and borrowing money) and guilt (over the time spent gambling and the repercussions on their family and friends). Some participants described a heavy mental burden caused by constant worry about financial losses from gambling. However, participants also pointed to more positive impacts that gambling had on their wellbeing. Specifically, they felt that placing bets made watching sport more interesting and highlighted that gambling could be a fun activity to enjoy with friends and family.
“I enjoy playing the games, as long as it doesn’t cost too much… it’s quite fun.”
Male participant aged 35 to 54 years old who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
Participants who were impacted by the gambling of others (friends, family or partners) reported lending money to the person who was gambling to help with bills and everyday purchases. The consequences of these loans varied. While some participants were minimally impacted or only felt “annoyed”, others needed to reduce their own spending, got into debt or incurred other negative financial consequences (for example, being forced to withdraw their pension before retirement age). Some participants also supported friends or family in managing their finances (for example, taking control over their spending) which could be a significant time commitment.
“Yes, so the knock-on effect was them [their child’s partner] not having any money and them [their child] having to come to me for money. Me having to cash in my pension which, now I'm hitting a not-so-good age, I don't have that to fall back on.”
Female participant aged over 55 years old, who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
The only positive financial impact highlighted by one participant was that they had received gifts from a family member who had won a significant amount of money through gambling.
Similarly to participants who experienced social impacts due to their own gambling, participants in this group reported conflict and relationship strain with the person and/or people in their life who gambled. Some participants expressed feeling secondary to the gambling which reduced their enjoyment spending time with the other person and could lead to feelings of isolation.
“He [father] would be so absorbed in a game, hooked on something, that we wouldn't see him at all. I'd say that [gambling] took him away from us.”
Female participant aged over 55 years old, who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
Gambling had also led to a lack of trust between some participants and their friends and/or family who were gambling. In some cases, participants were aware that someone had not been truthful about the extent of their gambling, while others suspected this may be the case. Participants highlighted that other relationships were also impacted, as they would avoid conversations about the person who was gambling out of embarrassment or would feel they had to lie to friends and family to conceal the negative impacts of gambling.
Participants reported a range of negative impacts on their health and wellbeing due to the gambling of others. They expressed anxiety and worry about the person gambling and others impacted (such as children). Participants reported feeling stressed about money they had loaned and the potential consequences stemming from money they had borrowed, such as long-term debt and receiving calls from lenders or debt collectors.
“The very definition of stress... when there's a situation that you can see is a difficult one, is a challenging one but you've got no means by which to change it.”
Female participant aged over 55 years old, who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
Participants also reported anger and frustration over their inability to help the person gambling. Participants emphasised the long-term nature of these emotional impacts. For example, some participants still felt impacts even once they were no longer living with or stopped helping the person who was gambling. These emotional impacts could also lead to physical consequences, such as lack of sleep caused by worry or anxiety.
7 The survey questions focused on impacts over the 12 months prior to the survey. However, the impacts described in this section are not limited to this time period but provide an overview of the lived experiences of participants.
8 This should not be assumed to be reflective of the experience of the wider population, but guides interpretation of the data.
In the survey, respondents were presented with a range of gambling-related harms and asked to indicate whether they had experienced these ‘never’, ‘occasionally’, ‘fairly often’ or ‘very often’ in the past year. This section will discuss participants’ experience of harms which they indicated that they had experienced ‘occasionally’.
Participants’ experiences of ‘occasional’ harm varied in terms of both frequency and impact(s). Participants described ‘occasional’ harms using a variety of frequencies, with some experiencing these harms multiple times per month while others experienced these harms once in the last year. There was also variation in the ways in which these harms had impacted participants’ lives. So far as possible (within the confines of the data), this section will explore how participants experienced each of the harms in the survey on an ‘occasional’ basis. 9 The next section will then discuss broader findings on the use of the ‘occasionally’ response, which apply to all harms.
Some participants who ‘occasionally’ cut back on everyday spending due to their own gambling explained that they had cut back on ‘treats’, regular socialising or eating out, rather than day-to-day necessities.
“Obviously I've always got food and drink in the house, but there would be times where I'd want a treat but then I'd blow my treat money.”
Male participant aged 18 to 34 years old who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
While some participants felt the impact of this harm was minimal, there were also some feelings of isolation, stress and frustration, particularly when participants were unable to socialise due to financial constraints. In one case, stress was worsened due to the participant’s earlier experiences of gambling – in this case, small-scale cutting back triggered feelings of worry from when financial harms had been more significant.
Some participants who ‘occasionally’ reduced their own spending as a result of someone else’s gambling described similar experiences, cutting back on socialising and “extras” such as takeaway coffees. The impacts of this harm tended to be described in terms such as “annoying”, or even “not significant”.
Other participants (including those impacted by their own and/or someone else’s gambling) also reduced their day-to-day spending on food and other groceries. One participant explained that cutting down on socialising and eating out (due to their own gambling) had progressed to selecting cheaper necessities as their spending on gambling increased. While this participant found the experience (occurring around once every 2 to 3 months) stressful, they felt it did not “dominate” their life. However, another participant who reduced their food spending every 4 to 6 months (after loaning money to an adult child), felt unable to stop worrying about how they would support themselves after having to make cutbacks. While the experience was less frequent, the scale of cutting back led to a greater impact on wellbeing.
“I suppose the bigger thing was what I buy foodwise. It was very much having to just go to Asda, buy what was reduced and pretty much make up batches of soup because that was the cheapest thing that was healthy that I could eat.”
Female participant aged over 55 years old, who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
Generally, participants felt that ‘occasional’ use of their savings or borrowing had not had a large impact on their life. The level of impact related to the amount of money used and/or borrowed and whether this required the participant to reduce spending in other areas. For example, some participants explained that the use of their savings (due to their own or someone else’s gambling) did not have a significant impact because the amounts of money were small and their income allowed them to maintain the same level of day-to-day spending.
However, there were some examples of negative impacts. One participant, who borrowed money from friends (due to their own gambling) felt this had caused him some anxiety and other negative feelings. However, this was minimal due to the small sums borrowed and the participant’s ability to pay friends back on time.
Some participants described feeling angry or frustrated with themselves after using savings for their own gambling when this required them to reduce spending in other areas (such as socialising). Another participant reflected that while the impact of using their savings "wasn't overly severe" they had to work longer hours to ensure they made up the money (which was earmarked for specific family and/or life events).
“It [using savings] didn't have an impact on me in a massive way. It was just frustration, anger, irritation.”
Male participant aged 35 to 54 years old who experienced harm relating to their own gambling.
Some participants experienced conflict or arguments with family and friends ‘occasionally’ related to their own gambling. These conflicts occurred when friends and family challenged participants’ gambling habits or expressed concerns about the participant gambling or borrowing money. Participants who experienced ‘occasional’ conflict related to the gambling of others described similar situations but also experienced conflict with other friends or family members who disagreed with the participant providing loans or money to cover gambling losses.
All occasions of conflict were felt to cause some level of emotional and/or social impact. Some participants whose gambling was the subject of the conflict felt stressed or negative about causing worry. Participants who experienced conflict related to their gambling or someone else’s gambling also felt this had impacted the quality of their relationships. In particular, conflict reduced their ability to speak openly with friends and/or family about the gambling-related harms they experienced. Some participants felt that ultimately the conflict had been constructive in encouraging them to reduce their gambling. However, the immediate impact of the conflict on their relationships was negative.
“I think it was sort of them [friends] looking out for my own good really, more than anything else. It wasn't like a screaming match, it was more constructive but still conflictive, essentially.”
Male participant aged 18 to 34 years old, who experienced harm relating to their own gambling.
Participants who had ‘occasionally’ lied to family or others had done at varying frequencies (multiple times per month to a few times per year) in order to hide the extent of their gambling activity or the gambling of someone else. Some participants also included situations where they did not feel that they had “lied” but had taken action to hide the true extent of the gambling (such as avoiding certain conversations or questions). In one case, the participant did not feel that hiding the extent of gambling behaviours of a family member ‘occasionally’ was very impactful because their relationships remained positive.
“I couldn't quite say it has no effect on me, everything is fine, and we're all happy families, etc., but yes, it does, but it is occasional.”
Male participant aged over 55 years old who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
However, other participants suggested that their ‘occasional’ experience of this harm was impactful for two reasons:
‘Occasional’ experiences included situations where participants consistently felt unable to share the extent of gambling behaviours with others. Some participants explained that they were not truthful with family or friends about the extent of their own or someone else’s gambling every time they spoke with them. This included close friends and family (for example, parents). However, due to the frequency of contact this only happened ‘occasionally’. This could negatively impact how participants felt about the quality of their relationships with those who did not know about the extent of the gambling.
‘Occasional’ experiences included hiding significant losses or other gambling-related harms from close friends or family. Participants felt that they were particularly likely to conceal a significant loss if they anticipated a negative reaction or had spent shared money (resulting in their partner or family also being financially impacted).
Participants who ‘occasionally’ felt isolated from other people experienced this feeling in a small number of specific situations. For one participant (who experienced harms related to their own gambling), this was during conversations with friends who spoke negatively about gambling. For another participant (who experienced harm related to a partner’s gambling), conversations with their friends and family triggered feelings of isolation because they did not share the same views about their partner’s gambling. The participant’s family felt that their partner’s gambling was problematic and suggested that actions should be taken. The participant did not want to address their partner’s gambling, which made them feel distanced and isolated from their family and friends offering opinions and advice.
Participants had mixed views on the experience of placing their harms on the four-point scale (‘very often’, ‘fairly often’, ‘occasionally’ and ‘never'). Some participants found it difficult to choose between the response options as the frequency of harm fluctuated throughout the year or were uncertain about which frequency of harm to ascribe to each option. Other participants were more confident in their choice of response option and had assigned (different) specific periods of time that they felt best reflected each option.
In the experimental phase survey report10 it was highlighted that: “the actual impact of occasionally experiencing each harm is unclear. These may represent fairly minor harms for some or […] could indicate the potential for harm rather than the experience of it.” This research demonstrates that a variety of impacts (including fairly minor and more serious experiences) can be captured under ‘occasional’ harm.
The use of the ‘occasionally’ option covered harms that occurred with some regularity, but which the participant did not consider frequent or serious enough to be covered by the ‘fairly often’ response. However, participants expressed different views about what level of frequency and seriousness should be considered ‘occasional’. These perceptions were informed by a number of factors, including participants’ earlier experiences of gambling harms. Use of the ‘occasionally’ option also covered harms which were very infrequent (such as “one-offs”, isolated or irregular events), because this was the lowest frequency of harm available to select. Some participants experiencing this level of harm felt that an additional response option between ‘never’ and ‘occasionally’ (such as ‘rarely’) would have more accurately captured their experience. Some participants particularly struggled to recall their experience of these harms.11
Some ‘occasional’ harms discussed by participants had very minimal impacts on their lives, perhaps causing only some “annoyance” or “frustration” which affected them for a short amount of time. When discussing reducing spending on non-essential everyday items, some participants also expressed impact in terms such as “not significant”.
In some cases, participants were clear that ‘occasional’ experience of a harm was less impactful than a harm experienced ‘fairly or very often’. For example, one participant had previously lived with a family member who gambled and described the harms they experienced during that period as being ‘fairly or very often’ and more severe. Since moving out of the house, the participant described experiences of harm as ‘occasional’ and less impactful, reflecting that "it doesn't affect me on a day-to-day basis". It is notable that gambling-related harms still dominated this participant’s relationship with the family member – however, the frequency and impact of the harms had reduced in line with the reduction in day-to-day contact.
In other cases, participants explained that the distinction between their ‘occasional’ and more frequent harms captured only the frequency of the harm rather than the impact. For example, one participant felt that an ‘occasional’ harm (borrowing money a few times a year) and a harm experienced ‘fairly often’ (hiding the extent of gambling weekly or monthly) impacted them similarly in terms of anxiety and other negative feelings.
Harms which occur ‘occasionally’ can have more significant and long-term impacts if the level of harm is particularly high (for example, irregular loaning of large amounts of money or consistently concealing gambling behaviours through ‘occasional’ dishonesty). While the more impactful ‘occasional’ harms discussed by participants in this research tended to occur with some kind of regularity (for example, once every few months), the findings also demonstrate that very infrequent or “one-off” harms have the potential to be impactful. For example, one significant loan can result in daily cut-backs until the affected person is able to make up the shortfall.
There were also examples of participants experiencing more regular ‘occasional’ harms (for example, once a month) who felt minimally impacted. Altogether, this demonstrates that there is not always a direct relationship between frequency and impacts of harms.
While participants generally understood the response options as a frequency scale and selected their response based on how often the harm occurred, the category labels (for example, ‘occasionally’) allowed for some interpretation. Participants’ interpretations of ‘occasionally’ were influenced by several factors.
Although survey respondents were asked to reflect on the gambling harms that they experienced within the last 12 months, some interview participants felt they were influenced by their most recent experiences. This was particularly the case where the frequency of gambling harms varied throughout the year. For example, one participant who had not needed to borrow money for a couple of months felt they focused on this experience rather than an experience earlier in the year when they borrowed money multiple times within a short period of time. Other participants found it difficult to recall specific scenarios in the past or preferred to focus on recent months because their experience of gambling-related harms had been lower.
Some participants had experienced gambling-related harms for an extended period of time, sometimes for decades before completing the survey. Participants reported comparing the impacts they had experienced in the past 12 months to older experiences when they were determining which response options to select. Participants described selecting the response option ‘occasionally’ if they had experienced comparatively more significant impacts in the past (for example, 10 years ago). Past experiences also impacted participants’ recall when completing the survey. For example, although they could not recall a specific incidence of borrowing money in the past year, one participant selected ‘occasionally’ for this question as it had happened frequently over previous years.
It was suggested that participants who were impacted by someone else’s gambling may use a different frame of reference depending on whether they live with the person who gambles. If they see the person every day, ‘occasional’ experiences may be more frequent (such as a few times a month) because the experience of the harm is considered in the context of day-to-day life. If they do not see the person every day, experience of the harm may be governed by how often they see the person who gambles – it is more likely in these circumstances that ‘occasional’ harm (for example, conflict or suffering financial harms) could capture every interaction that they have with the person who gambles.
“If I lived with someone I would think of occasional might be maybe once or twice a month that something has affected me whereas my context is different. I don't live with the individual [father], but I might find that every time I saw that person it might be an issue for me, so therefore I'd still say it's occasional.”
Female participant aged over 55 years old who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
Some participants who experienced harm related to their own gambling felt they selected the response option ‘occasionally’ because (at the time of the survey) they did not appreciate or acknowledge the frequency and/or severity of the harms. These participants had generally reduced their gambling since the survey and felt they had greater clarity on the severity of their earlier experiences. Some of these participants felt they would now select the response option ‘fairly often’ or ‘very often’ to capture the harms they stated were ‘occasional’ at the time. In other cases, certain words in the survey questions (for example, “lie” and “conflict”) triggered negative feelings or images of a harm that participants did not feel they had experienced. Altogether, this demonstrates that interpretation of the term ‘occasionally’ can be guided by the respondent’s overall feelings about their experience of gambling.
Participants described opting for the response option ‘occasionally’ when they felt there were other non-gambling-related factors at play in their experience of harm. Participants felt that external factors made it difficult to place their experience of harm on a scale because they were unsure if their experience of harm (for example, cutting back on day-today spending) was solely related to gambling (compared to other factors such as employment status). This uncertainty led some participants to select ‘occasionally’. For example, one participant was not confident that they had reduced their spending solely because of gambling given the ongoing cost of living crisis.
“There were other factors going on at the time as well as the gambling. So it was trying to pick out how much of it was definitely down to the gambling.”
Male participant aged 35 to 54 years old, who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
Participants generally interpreted the response options similarly across the different harm-related questions and applied the same rationale when selecting their answers. In some cases, participants had clear frequency-based definitions of the response option which led to consistent responses. However, other participants were also influenced by wider factors (for example, broader feelings about their experience of the harm). While it is clear that this could lead to different frequencies being ascribed to different ‘occasional’ harms, there were no clear patterns related to particular survey questions.
9All harms are included separately aside from being absent or performing poorly at work or study. Unfortunately, there was not sufficient data to draw any specific conclusions on this harm. While every effort was made to ensure that participants had experienced a range of ‘occasional’ harms, some harms (particularly financial harms) were more prominent in the final sample. There were also situations where participants struggled to recall a particular harm, given the length of time between the interview and survey completion.
10Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Experimental statistics stage.
11Participants recall may have been impacted by the time period between the survey and follow-up interview.
The complexity of how gambling-related harms manifest emerged as a theme throughout the interviews. The experiences described were diverse and influenced by the specific circumstances of participants’ lives. For some, harms appeared to occur simultaneously with no clear sequence, while others felt that one harm led clearly to another harm or multiple harms.
Another experience was harms continuously feeding into one another in a cyclical way, but participants were not always able to discern the factors triggering this cycle. One similarity that emerged across the interviews was that participants found it difficult to disentangle the harms they had experienced as a result of their own or someone else’s gambling. Participants were not always able to unpick the ways that the negative impacts they had experienced were connected and sometimes struggled to understand or explain how different harms interacted with each other.
This section explores some of the ways that the different gambling-related harms were connected in participants’ lived experience. Illustrative examples are included to show how these harms were experienced in different contexts and how different types of harm (such as financial, social and wellbeing harms) interact.
Some participants felt that one harm related to their own gambling clearly led to another harm. For example, one participant described how they were financing their gambling from their savings, and once they had depleted their savings they then began to cut back on their everyday spending. In this instance, the financial loss from gambling contributed to a depletion of savings, which then directly led to an additional financial impact on their daily spending.
Participants also described ways in which financial harms led to relationship or health harms, usually triggered by a financial loss resulting from their gambling activity. When thinking through the negative impacts they had experienced as a result of their own gambling, some participants identified their response to losing money as the starting point for other types of harms.
For some, this was experienced as a clear sequence. The negative financial impact resulting from gambling loses led participants to try to reduce their spending in other areas which then had knock-on effects on other areas of their life. For example, participants spent less money on socialising and going out with their partner or friends in the wake of a gambling loss, which had an impact on their social life and their relationships. At times this caused arguments between friends or feelings of “frustration” expressed by the partners of these participants.
The reach of these sequences of events was varied. Some participants described two or three negative things happening a few months apart with no further negative impacts identified after this point. For others, the impacts of their gambling compounded until almost every aspect of their life had been affected due to the initial financial loss resulting from their gambling.
Illustration of how a sequence of harms resulting from the financial impact of gambling was experienced.
One participant explained how their gambling led to significant financial losses, resulting in their bills going unpaid. They initially used their overdraft to pay for these expenses, but once they had exhausted their overdraft they used credit cards. Once their credit cards were maxed out they ordered new ones before finally borrowing money from friends. After these efforts were not sufficient to cover their expenses, the participant turned to theft. This had wide-reaching consequences, resulting in a criminal conviction and the breakdown of their marriage.
“All that's left is theft, and once that's gone, then that's it. You're in the gutter. It's a monster that just keeps eating and eating and eating, and you can't get away from it.”
Participant who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
Usually, the financial loss was viewed as the trigger for these sequences of negative impacts. However, there were some exceptions where a sequence of events resulting from an individual’s gambling led to them experiencing harm unrelated to losing money. For example, one participant described how they would spend the night gambling at the casino, which would make it difficult for them to get up for work the next day and impact their performance at work.
“Even when I hadn't lost money, [...] it was affecting the next day because of the lack of sleep…[...] Probably, it also combined with drink and everything, and you're supposed to go to work at nine o'clock, which is like two hours sleep. All this junk with the alcohol and gambling, and you're trying to think about work. It takes a bit of time to settle back into work.”
Male participant aged over 55 years old who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
While impacts from gambling were described as a sequence of events in some cases, other participants pointed to how the negative impacts of their gambling were experienced as a cycle. For example, some participants experienced a cycle of losing money, trying to hide the extent of their gambling losses and conflict with their partner. This led to them taking further effort to hide their gambling in order to reduce the likelihood of this conflict, which would ultimately lead to worse strain on their relationships if the extent of their dishonesty was found out.
“Probably at the same time, I was spending more, so I was lying more. […] Yes, it's the fact that I've been lying, then she'd [partner] be mad at the fact that I was lying as well, and it got worse.”
Male participant aged 35 to 54 years old, who experienced harm related to their own gambling.
Illustration of how gambling activity can be exacerbated as part of a cycle of gambling harms.
Some participants described a cycle whereby gambling-related harms led to increased gambling activity, and subsequently increased harms. One participant explained how they felt embarrassed when they lost money from betting. To avoid being perceived by their friends as having been irresponsible with their money, they concealed the extent of their gambling. They believed this then led to the frequency of their gambling increasing as there was no one to question their behaviour. This created a cycle of dishonestly feeding into increased gambling losses and/or financial harm, resulting in more dishonesty. The participant felt that if their friends had been aware of their gambling they would have supported them to cut down, thereby reducing the financial harm they experienced as a result of their gambling.
“I didn't have any accountability structure outside of myself…there was no opportunity for anyone to say, to tell me that I was being frivolous and daft and that I needed to reign it in because they weren't aware of it.”
Participant who experienced harm relating to their own gambling.
Other participants described their experiences of gambling-related harms as neither a sequence nor a cycle, but instead explained how these harms were experienced simultaneously. It was particularly difficult for these participants to unpick or separate the impacts of different types of gambling harms; they experienced multiple harms at the same time, combining to have a significant and harmful impact on their life.
For example, gambling-related harms such as losing money, getting into debt and lying to friends and family were experienced by participants all at the same time, in addition to feelings of anxiety, relationship strain and underperformance at work (all resulting from gambling). Participants described a “general feeling of anxiety” or sadness related to their gambling which they felt was not the clear result of one harm but rather multiple simultaneous harms - “a mixture of everything”.
Gambling-related harms do not exist in a vacuum, separate to other experiences in people’s lives. Participants’ experiences of harm were impacted by and interrelated to external factors and in many cases, participants found it difficult to disentangle gambling-related harm from other harms.
For example, some participants experienced mental health problems, financial struggles, or relationship difficulty prior to them starting to gamble. When their mental health worsened, debts accumulated or relationships ultimately ended, they were sure their gambling had contributed to this but were unsure quite how much. Generally, it was felt that the more money was spent on gambling, the worse the subsequent impacts were – beyond this, participants were unsure about the exact ways in which their gambling activity was causing negative impacts in their life.
In some cases, sequences of harms could also be triggered by a non-gambling related event in the participant’s life. For example, one participant described how financial harms (and the subsequent impacts of these harms) were triggered by a reduction in income. While the participant’s gambling activity did not change during this time, the impact of this activity on their finances became greater and anxiety-inducing.
Participants who had been impacted by someone else’s gambling experienced similar patterns of harms as those affected by their own gambling activity, describing a sequence of impacts or, alternatively, experiencing impacts simultaneously. Where a clear sequence of harms was described, this usually began when someone close to them lost money through gambling.
Often, the participants lent money to help the person close to them mitigate financial harms caused by gambling, such as being unable to pay their bills. As with the sequence of harms described (with relation to participants own gambling), these individuals experienced financial harms that then led into social impacts.
In some instances, participants were concealing the truth from those around them – hiding both the extent of their friend or family member’s financial loss and their own involvement in providing a loan. One participant described how they felt forced into dishonestly due to friends “telling them off” for supporting a family member’s gambling. Lending money to friends struggling with gambling also meant that participants had less money to spend on themselves, including on socialising with their friends.
Several emotional impacts also resulted from someone else losing money due to gambling. Participants who felt they needed to lie about the extent of someone else’s gambling felt “guilty” about concealing the truth in this way. Those who lent money felt angry and frustrated if this money was not paid back and resentment that their loved one prioritised spending money on gambling. This led to feelings of stress and worry, having a detrimental impact on their mental health and wellbeing. Participants described the sequence of impacts they experienced as feeling beyond their control as they were not able to directly impact the gambling activity.
The emotional impacts experienced by participants were made worse by other factors in participants’ lives. For example, some individuals were particularly worried by their loved one’s gambling when struggling with their own financial issues; they didn’t have enough money to help but would feel guilty if they did not offer financial assistance. This left them feeling as if they had no way of minimising the harms they experienced as a result of someone else’s gambling – regardless of the action they took, they would find themselves adversely affected, whether financially or emotionally.
“So, it is a sequence because when you haven't got money but you are going to help somebody, that is stressful because on one hand, you haven't got the money but then on the other hand, you want to help somebody as well at the same time.”
Male participant aged 35 to 54 years old, who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
Illustration of the long-term impacts related to someone else’s gambling.
Harms experienced by participants as a result of the financial losses of a loved one could be far-reaching, with the impacts still being felt even after the gambling activity, or their proximity to it, had ceased. For example, harms experienced in childhood were then felt to follow participants into adulthood, leading to additional impacts throughout their lives. However, participants sometimes felt it was difficult to specify the way past impacts had led to long-term impacts in their lives.
One participant was affected by the gambling of a family member who had been gambling since before the participant was born. In the participant’s own mind this affected every aspect of their childhood, with knock-on impacts into adulthood. For example, the participant explained how as an adult they feel anxious about money despite being in a stable financial position. They believed this was due to growing up in an environment where money “seemed to disappear all the time”. However, they found it difficult to state the impact of gambling with certainty because they didn’t know what their life (and worries) would have been like had they grown up around people who did not gamble.
“I think it's quite hard to unpick it because if that is your reality, you don't realise how different your reality is to someone else's because someone else is having a completely different existence where there is no gambling.”
Participant who experienced harm related to someone else’s gambling.
Participants who had experienced harm as a result of both their own gambling activity and someone else’s gambling were asked whether these harms were connected to each other. There were limited examples of how these experiences of harm interrelated, and instead participants viewed the impacts as separate experiences.
One participant explained how they would worry about the financial impact of their friends gambling and this would result in them reducing their own gambling. In this way, experiencing harm (in this case, feeling anxiety and/or worry) because of someone else’s gambling led to a reduction in harms experienced as a result of their own gambling. There were no other examples of gambling harms being connected in this way beyond a broad sense that the impacts of different harms can build up over time to create a negative impact on one’s life, often comprising of a general sense of upset or stress.
Interviews were reliant on participants’ ability to recall their experiences at the time of completing the survey, which may have been up to 10 months prior to fieldwork. This was a particular risk when we were asking about ‘occasional’ impacts which could be fairly minor in participant’s lives and potentially more challenging to recall. Although in general participants were able to think back to the time of completing the survey, some participants found it difficult to remember the reasons they answered survey questions in a certain way, which limited data collection.
This was particularly the case where participants had a long (and fluctuating) history of experiencing gambling-related harms. Social desirability concerns may also have influenced participants’ responses. However, steps were taken during interviews to reassure participants that the interview was an open and non-judgemental space (for example, interviewers responding neutrally, emphasising that there were no right or wrong answers and reassuring participants that responses were confidential).
Due to recruitment and time constraints, our achieved sample had a higher proportion of men (13 participants) compared to women (3 participants) and those who were White British or White other (12 participants) or Asian British or Asian other (4 participants) compared to other ethnic groups. Research shows that gambling harms vary between different demographic groups and harm can particularly impact those who are marginalised in multiple ways. These varied experiences may therefore have been less well represented in this research.
In general, participants reported that their experience completing the survey was positive. Participants appreciated the option to complete the survey online or on paper and felt that questions were self-explanatory and understandable. Participants felt the harms questions using the four-point scale (‘never’, ‘occasionally’, ‘fairly often’, ‘very often’) were clear and they generally felt able to distinguish between the categories and place their experience in one category (based on their own definitions of each category). This research has led to our recommendations.
As set out in the introduction to this report, gambling-related harms are defined as the adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. This research demonstrates the following points, which should inform analysis and interpretation of the survey data.
Participants tended to feel that experience of an ‘occasional’ harm was negative or adverse in some way, even where they felt the impacts were very minimal. Therefore, in line with the definition, it is clear that the ‘occasional’ response is capturing gambling-related harms. The exception to this is that when discussing reducing spending on everyday items which could be regarded as non-essential (for example, costs associated with regular socialising or takeaway coffees), some participants described the impacts in terms such as “not significant”.
In these cases, it is arguable that the 'occasional' response is not capturing gambling-related harms because there is no real adverse impact. It should be acknowledged that ‘occasional’ responses tend to involve some degree of harm. However, there are exceptions (which may only relate to reducing spending on non-essential items), where ‘occasional’ experiences do not involve negative impact.
The adverse impacts experienced by participants ranged from feeling "annoyed" or "frustrated" to more significant effects including anxiety and cutting back on daily essentials. When presenting the data, it will be important to note that ‘occasional’ harms capture a range of adverse impacts, with some being very minimal while others are more severe.
In some cases, participants were clear that ‘occasional’ experience of a harm was less impactful than a harm experienced ‘fairly or very often’. However, in other cases participants explained that the distinction between their ‘occasional’ and more frequent harms captured only the frequency of the harm rather than the impact. Harms which occur ‘occasionally’ can have more significant and long-term impacts if they level of harm is particularly high (for example, irregular loaning of large amounts of money or consistently concealing gambling behaviours through ‘occasional’ dishonesty).
When presenting the data, it will be important to note the distinction between frequency and impact. This research demonstrates that while many ‘occasional’ experiences of harm will be less serious than more frequent experience, this is not always the case.
A number of wider factors also impacted participants’ decisions to select the response ‘occasionally’, including previous experience of gambling-related harms and proximity to harm. This variety of experiences should be acknowledged when presenting data on ‘occasional’ harms. If more detailed and/or specific quantitative data collection is considered helpful for future surveys, the following could be considered:
This research has demonstrated that ‘occasional’ harms cover a range of frequencies. Another option could be added (such as ‘rarely’) to differentiate very infrequent experiences from harms occurring with more regularity. This may be particularly helpful to pick up impacts related to infrequent events (such as the impacts of gambling once a year at the Grand National).
It would also be possible to use specific defined frequencies in harms questions. However, this would require further detailed consideration as it is clear from this research that experience of harms often fluctuates throughout the year and therefore responses such as ‘weekly’ or ‘monthly’ will not resonate with all participants.
This research has also demonstrated that there is not always a direct relationship between frequency and impacts of harm. Additional measures could be included in the survey to capture the impacts of different frequencies of harms. This could include questions which ask survey respondents to rate the impacts that a particular harm has had on their life (using a defined scale).
Participants also suggested the possibility of incorporating more measurements of wellbeing and/or emotions (for example, anxiety, frustration or anger) as a way to more fully understand the direct and long-term impacts of gambling-related harms.
Any changes to answer categories would need to be tested experimentally on the main stage of the survey. In particular, the questions to answer would be:
Reflecting on their own experiences, participants described the impacts of gambling-related harms as difficult to measure. This was because harms were interrelated, often long-term and it could be hard to disentangle impacts related to gambling and other causes. This emphasises the importance of continued qualitative research to support interpretation (and give depth to) quantitative findings about gambling-related harms.
Minimising the time period between survey collection and follow-up interviews would aid this process, to help with participant recall. More interactive forms of qualitative research, such as diary studies or use of visual aids could also help participants to make connections between different impacts of gambling and discuss how these come together in their lived experience. It will also be important that qualitative research includes people with a range of backgrounds and experiences (taking into account factors such as gender, ethnicity and sexuality). This will enable better understanding of how experiences of gambling harm may differ for minority groups and/or those who are marginalised in multiple ways.