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Measuring the adverse consequences from gambling

Read how we have developed new questions about adverse consequence from gambling which are included in the GSGB survey.

Published
25 July 2024

Last updated
25 July 2024 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Survey development, testing, and selection of items
  3. Peer review

Peer review

Two external academics, Professor Robert Williams and Dr. Rachel Volberg, were invited to evaluate the Gambling Commission's methodology for developing the harms questions and to make recommendations for refining the items. Professor Williams and Dr Volberg commended the survey as well-designed and coherent, and agreed that the items captured a wide range of gambling-related harms. They also supported the inclusion of questions about harm caused by someone else's gambling.

Professor Williams and Dr Volberg suggested several areas for improvement. They emphasised the need to ensure a balanced representation of questions across different domains of gambling related harm. Additionally, they recommended including a question related to productivity, such as absenteeism from school or work, to broaden the range of consequences captured by the survey. They also discussed the unexpected performance of the scaled response options, in which fewer respondents reported experiencing each consequence 'a little' than 'a lot'. To address this issue, they recommended modifying response options to ensure they are clear and evenly spaced in terms of severity or frequency. Professor Williams and Dr. Volberg also suggested conducting experimental research to compare the results obtained using binary (yes or no) questions with those obtained using scaled response options. This comparison would help determine the most effective way to capture the experience of gambling-related harm.

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Pilot study Next section
Testing binary versus scaled response options (Experimental phase)
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