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
16 November 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

The impact of gambling on spending

Figure 8: The impact of gambling on spending

Young people who actively gambled in the last 12 months were asked if their own gambling had stopped them buying things that they wanted or, conversely, helped them to buy things that they needed.

Reflecting the perceived impact on households of family members gambling, as discussed in the next section, young people were most likely to highlight that gambling had helped them to buy things that they needed either all of the time, often or sometimes (10 percent). They were less likely to say that their own gambling stopped them from buying things that they wanted (5 percent).

Figure 8 information

GC_GAMBSTBUY GC_GAMBHPBUY. Thinking about the last 12 months, how often, if at all, has your own gambling led to any of the following things?
Base: All 11 to 17 year olds answering who have spent their own money gambling in the last 12 months 'Stopped you from buying things you have want' (850). 'Helped you buy things you have needed' (850).

Figure 8: The impact of gambling on spending

The impact of gambling on spending	Percentage who never	Percentage who rarely	Percentage who sometimes	Percentage who often	Percentage who all the time	Percentage who don't know
Helped you buy things you have needed	82%	5%	5%	2%	3%	4%
Stopped you from buying things you have wanted	89%	3%	2%	1%	2%	3%

Those in the ‘at risk’ group were more likely than ‘non-problem’ gamblers to say that their own gambling stopped them from buying things that they wanted (24 percent compared to 2 percent) and that gambling had helped them to buy the things that they needed (36 percent compared to 7 percent).

Girls were more likely than boys to say that gambling had never helped them to buy the things that they needed (86 percent compared to 78 percent). This pattern was not seen last year. This is because, while the proportion for boys has remained constant, for girls the proportion has increased (from 80 percent in 2022).

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Last updated: 16 November 2023

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