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

Adherence to participant-selection instructions

You can view tables referenced in this section by downloading the file Tables A1 to A48 - Gambling Survey - Experimental statistics stage (XLSX)

Adherence refers to whether the household had correctly followed instructions on who should complete the survey. This was established by comparing the number of adults within the household completing the survey with the number of stated and eligible adults. In a single-adult household we would expect one participant and in a two-adult household we would expect two participants. For C2 (up to four adults) addresses only, in a three-adult household, three participants would be expected and in a four-plus adult household, four participants would be expected.

Non-adherence is where fewer participants than the number of intended participants (for example only one participant completed in a two-adult household) were recorded¹³. In households with multiple (potential) participants it is harder to get all eligible individuals to take part and for that reason we might expect adherence to be greater in C1 (up to two adults) households.

For C1 (up to two adults) households, 74 percent of households were adherent meaning that all eligible participants took part. In C2 (up to four adults) households, 61 per cent were adherent. This difference was statistically significant (Table A.16 Whether the household adhered to participant selection instructions, by experimental condition).

References

¹³ As birthdays for all household members were not collected in the questionnaire, it was not possible to conduct any analysis for adherence to the instruction that those with the two most recent birthdays were the ones to take part within the household selection for C1 (up to two adults) addresses.

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Completion rates in responding households Next section
Duplicate cases

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Last updated: 18 April 2023

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