Report

Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Experimental statistics stage

Gambling Commission report produced by NatCen on the experimental statistics stage of the gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey.

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Published
19 April 2023

Last updated
18 April 2023 - Changes

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Contents

• Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Experimental statistics stage

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• Executive summary
• - Experimentation work
• - Response
• - Assessment of experiment results
• - Recommendations
• Introduction
• - Background
• - Aims and overview
• Methodology and response
• - Survey design
• - Questionnaire content and design
• - Response to the survey
• Testing an alternative approach to the selection of participants within households
• - Introduction
• - Completion rates in responding households
• - Adherence to participant-selection instructions
• - Duplicate cases
• - Household clustering
• - Prevalence of gambling behaviours
• - Conclusion
• Measuring gambling-related harms
• - Introduction
• - Testing different ways of asking about gambling harms
• - Results
• - Conclusion
• Testing different approaches to asking questions about gambling participation
• - Introduction
• - Comparison of gambling participation across the three approaches
• - Potential primacy effect with the long-list approach
• - Additional considerations for the postal questionnaire
• - Other considerations
• - Conclusion

Conclusion

The four-point answer scale (condition A) showed improvements over the prior three-point scale, with more logical sequences of endorsement and reduced item non-response. It also provides more analytical opportunities than the binary 'yes' or “no” option (condition B).

For most harms, those responding yes' in condition B (binary answer option) produced similar endorsement rates to those responding 'fairly often or very often' in condition A. However, for some harms (such as lying to family and others about the extent of one’s gambling) those answering 'yes' likely included people who only experienced this once or twice.

Contrary to expectations, those answering 'yes' at the harms from others questions displayed less consistent patterns of association with personal wellbeing.

The changes to the screening questions to route people into the harms from others questions have resulted in improvements, matching the rate closer to the gambling participation rate.

Some of the harms from others answer options differed, potentially confusing participants by switching between different scales.

Some analytical ambiguity was identified in the gambling suicidality questions. The wording and routing for these questions should be determined by the data needs.

Previous section
Results

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Last updated: 18 April 2023

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