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Gambling Survey for Great Britain - technical report

Gambling Survey for Great Britain: Official statistics

Published
29 February 2024

Last updated
2 October 2025 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Introduction

Introduction

This technical report provides detail on the background and methodology for the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB). Detail on the issued sample size, response and weighting strategy for each wave of fieldwork is provided in the wave-specific reports. Detail of the online and postal questionnaires used are provided alongside the annual reports.

Background

Data collection for the GSGB official statistics started in July 2023 and 2 annual reports have now been published:

  • Year 1 (published July 2024 based on data collected between July 2023 and February 2024)
  • Year 2 (published October 2025 based on data collected between January 2024 and January 2025).

There was an extensive development period leading up to the start of the official statistics data collection which started in July 2023. This consisted of a pilot and experimental stage. Findings from the pilot were published in May 2022 and are reported in Participation and Prevalence: Pilot methodology review report. 2 reports on findings from the experimental phase have been published. The first report, covering the first 2 steps, was published in April 2023 Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Experimental statistics stage report. A further report, covering the final step, was published in November 2023 Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Final experimental statistics stage (Step 3).

Survey objectives

The aims of the GSGB are to:

  • collect data on a wide range of gambling behaviours, including participation and the consequences of gambling from 20,000 individuals aged 18 years and over annually
  • provide a rolling programme of data collection to give the Gambling Commission the ability to gain timely insights and respond to emerging trends
  • produce and publish gambling participation and prevalence statistics as official statistics, in accordance with the standards set out by the Office for Statistics Regulation in the Code of Practice for Statistics (opens in new tab).

Survey design

The GSGB uses what is known as a push-to-web approach, in which people are first encouraged to take part online, completing a web questionnaire. Those who do not initially take part online are subsequently offered an alternative means of participation. In the GSGB this alternative is a paper questionnaire, sent by post. Both data collection modes provide privacy for respondents to answer questions honestly, and by offering an alternative, the survey can include people who are not online or who do not feel willing or able to go online to take part. This helps improve the accuracy and representativeness of the survey. Moreover, some gambling behaviours, notably the propensity to gamble online, are correlated with the probability to take part in online surveys, which can bias results1. The importance of offering the alternative paper questionnaire was highlighted within the pilot report with 43 percent completing the survey by this mode and those completing the paper questionnaire being more likely to be of an older age and a lottery only player.

Inviting people to take part in the GSGB involved randomly selecting addresses within Great Britain, known as random probability sampling. This approach is discussed further in the next section.

References

1Sturgis, P., & Kuha, J. (2022). How survey mode affects estimates of the prevalence of gambling harm: a multisurvey study. Public Health, 204, 63-69.

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