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

Introduction

The Gambling Commission has been developing a series of survey questions aimed at measuring gambling-related harms. This includes measurement of harms experienced because of one’s own gambling (harms to self) and the harms experienced due to someone’s else gambling (harms from others). These questions were tested in the Participation and Prevalence: Pilot methodology review report.

The questions tested include measurement of 14 different types of harms and were split into two types.

Type 1 harms are those deemed to be so serious that experience of this even once would be detrimental to individuals, communities and society. This includes relationship breakdown, losing something of significant financial value; violence or abuse and crime.

Type 2 harms are those which if experienced frequently are likely to be harmful but where experience of this once or twice may not necessarily be harmful or may serve to indicate potential risk for future harms. This includes spending less on everyday items, increased use of credit or savings to gamble, experience of conflict within relationships, feeling isolated, and lying about the extent of gambling and poor work performance or work absences.

In the pilot, participants were directed to answer yes or no for type 1 harms. For type 2 harms, participants were asked to report if they had 'never' experienced this, if they had experienced this 'a little', or if they had experienced this 'a lot'.

Analysis of the pilot data showed issues with the type 2 (scaled) answer responses. Response patterns did not conform to expectations that endorsement would decline as severity increased, yet this pattern was not observed in the data. A subsequent expert review of the Commission’s procedures undertaken to date¹⁴ noted the unequal spacing between answer options: it is a small increment to move from 'never' to 'a little' but a much larger increment to move from 'a little' to 'a lot'. It was recommended that these answer options be changed to a more standard, and evenly spaced, response scale.

The pilot report also recommended that further experimental work be undertaken to better assess patterns of response for each type 2 harm using the revised answer options. In addition, the harms questions were updated and refined after expert review to take on board recommendations.

References

¹⁴ Developing survey questions capturing gambling-related harms, Heather Wardle, Viktorija Kesaite, Robert Williams, Rachel Volberg (2022).

Next section
Testing different ways of asking about gambling harms

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Last updated: 18 April 2023

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