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Report

Young People and Gambling 2025: Official statistics

Gambling Commission report produced by Ipsos on young people and their gambling behaviour, attitudes and awareness in 2025.

Published
13 November 2025

Last updated
13 November 2025 - Changes

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Contents

Research design

Trend data

Since 2011, the Gambling Commission and Ipsos have conducted an annual survey into the gambling behaviours of young people aged 11 to 16 years old in Great Britain. In 2023, we extended this to include 17 year olds. This report delivers the results from the 2025 survey, which explores young people’s current rates of participation in gambling.

Sampling

The Young People Omnibus (YPO) is an annual survey of young people attending secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland. The survey covers pupils in curriculum years 7 to 12 (S1 to S6 in Scotland).

The survey invites pupils to take part who are attending academies (public funded schools held accountable through a legally binding ‘funding agreement’ in England) and maintained (overseen, or ‘maintained’ by the Local Authority) secondary and middle-deemed secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland. From 2023 the survey also invited independent schools (schools who charge fees to attend instead of being funded by the government and do not have to follow the national curriculum) to participate.

To enable this a 3 stage sampling process was used:

  1. In England and Wales, a sample of schools was selected from Department for Education’s ‘Get Information About Schools (opens in new tab)’ database (a comprehensive listing of secondary schools in England and Wales). Special schools were excluded. The sample frame was stratified by Government Office Region (GOR), and, within each stratum, schools were selected proportional to the number of pupils attending the school. In England and Wales, a sample of 450 middle deemed schools were selected to participate in the survey. In Scotland, a sample of 37 schools were selected from the Scottish Government’s school contacts database. The sample was stratified by local authority and school size. Therefore, in total, 487 schools were selected to participate in the survey.
  2. Three curriculum year groups (between Year 7 and Year 12 for England and Wales and between S1 and S6 in Scotland) were selected at random for each school.
  3. Schools were also given the opportunity to provide additional classes and year groups. All members of the randomly selected class group were selected to fill out the self-completion survey.

Recruiting schools

To maintain comparability, the sampling of schools has remained consistent year on year. However, in 2023 Year 12 pupils and independent schools were included for the first time. The way in which schools are recruited has evolved to respond to technological developments and most recently in respect to the demands that were placed on schools during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Advance packs

All schools in the main sample for England and Wales received an invitation pack across November and December 2024. The pack included a letter informing them about the survey, a leaflet containing more information on how the data is used and contact details for the Ipsos Young People Omnibus team. The packs are addressed to a named head teacher.

In Scotland, the first step was to send a letter to local authorities which contain schools in the sample frame. Local authorities were informed about the survey and given the option to opt out of the research, on behalf of schools in their area. In total 21 Scottish local authorities were contacted, and 2 opted out of the survey. Selected schools in the remaining 19 local authorities were then sent the invitation letter and information sheet.

Contacting schools

In December 2024, the Ipsos Young People Omnibus research team conducted a briefing session with our school recruitment team to provide information about the survey content, to update them of any changes, and share ideas and tips for encouraging participation.

Members of the school recruitment team were each allocated a batch of schools to contact, which contained a mix of regions (to avoid bias). The sample included contact details for the school. Where possible, recruiters sought to enrich this by looking at the school website to try and obtain a named contact or direct email address.

Recruiters made contact with all schools in their sample to:

  1. gain headteacher consent for the school to participate
  2. collect contact details for a liaison person within the school (usually the teacher for a selected class)
  3. select one mixed ability class from each nominated curriculum year group for the school
  4. arrange a time and date when each class will take part in the online survey.

Recruiters managed this process by using an electronic booking system, which the research team also access to monitor the response rates.

Table A.2 provides details of the number of telephone calls that recruiters made to individual schools:

Table A.2: Number of telephone calls for purposes of school recruitment

Table A.2: Number of telephone calls for purposes of school recruitment.
Number of calls made Number of schools
Under 5 116
5 to 10 237
Over 10 110

Of the schools who did refuse to take part, the most common reason given was that they were too busy to participate in the survey.

Incentives have become an essential addition to protecting the response rates to the survey. They also help encourage schools to choose to participate in the Young People Omnibus over other surveys, which offer cash incentives. In 2025, all schools participating in the Young People Omnibus with 2 or 3 classes were offered a £200 cash incentive, schools who offered one class were offered an £100 incentive. Schools were also given a teaching pack, containing data and example exercises to use in their classes and a lesson plan and resources developed by the PSHE Association.

Once a school agreed to participate, a confirmation email was sent, providing schools with their individual online survey link, a template for letters to parents and further information to administer the survey.

Fieldwork for the study was conducted from 13 January to 13 June 2025.

Response rate

In total, from a sample frame of 487 schools in England, Scotland and Wales, 62 took part in the 2025 survey, giving a school response rate of 14 percent.

Overall, 3,666 pupils aged 11 to 17 years old from the 62 schools completed the Commission section of the survey online, representing an average of 59 pupils per school.

Weighting

Data is weighted by gender, age and region. The weights were derived from data supplied by the following sources:

Statistical reliability

The respondents to the questionnaire are only samples of the total population, so we cannot be certain that the figures obtained are exactly those we would have if everybody had been interviewed (the true values). We can, however, predict the variation between the sample results and the true values from knowledge of the size of the samples on which the results are based and the number of times that a particular answer is given. The confidence with which we can make this prediction is usually chosen to be 95 percent - that is, the chances are 95 in 100 that the true value will fall within a specified range. Table A.3 illustrates the predicted ranges for different sample sizes and percentage results at the 95 percent confidence interval.

Table A.3: Approximate sampling tolerances by sample size

Table A.3: Approximate sampling tolerances by sample size.
Size of sample on which survey results is based Approximate sampling tolerances applicable to percentages at or near these levels
10 or 90 percent 30 or 70 percent 50 percent
Plus or minus Plus or minus Plus or minus
100 interviews 6 9 10
500 interviews 3 4 4
1,000 interviews 2 3 3
3,666 interviews (Young People Omnibus Commission respondents, 2025) 1 2 2

For example, with a sample of 3,666 where 30 percent give a particular answer, the chances are 95 in 100 that the 'true' value (which would have been obtained if the whole population had been interviewed) will fall within the range of plus or minus 2 percentage points from the sample result.

Strictly speaking, the tolerances shown here apply only to pure random samples, although they offer an approximation for the complex design used by the current study.

When results are compared between separate groups within a sample, different results may be obtained. The difference may be 'real', or it may occur by chance (because not everyone in the population has been interviewed). To test if the difference is a real one - such as if it is 'statistically significant', we again must know the size of the samples, the percentage giving a certain answer and the degree of confidence chosen. If we assume the '95 percent confidence interval', the differences between the 2 sample results must be greater than the values given in the Table A.4.

Table A.4: Differences required for significance

Table A.4: Differences required for significance.
Size of sample compared Differences required for significance at or near these percentage levels
10 or 90 percent 30 or 70 percent 50 percent
Plus or minus Plus or minus Plus or minus
100 and 100 8 13 14
250 and 100 7 11 12
500 and 250 5 7 8
500 and 500 4 6 6
1,000 and 500 3 5 5
1,000 and 1,000 3 4 4
1,500 and 1,000 2 4 4

Sample profile

Profile of young people

Table A.5 outlines the details of the sample profile for the 2025 study; covering all 11 to 17-year-olds who participated in the Young People Omnibus.

Table A.5 - Sample profile - Commission section 2025

Table A.5: Sample profile 2025
Sample group Unweighted (number) Unweighted (percentage) Weighted (percentage)
Total 3,666 100% 100%
Gender of pupils
Male 1,856 51% 49%
Female 1,697 46% 48%
Non-binary 35 1% 1%
My gender is not listed 28 1% 1%
Prefer not to say 50 1% 1%
Age of pupils
11 255 7% 6%
12 761 21% 19%
13 667 18% 19%
14 803 22% 19%
15 659 18% 20%
16 345 9% 13%
17 176 5% 4%
Year of pupils1
7 836 23% 19%
8 608 17% 19%
9 801 22% 19%
10 776 21% 18%
11 344 9% 18%
12 301 8% 8%
Ethnic origin
White 2,714 74% 68%
Asian or Asian British 436 12% 15%
Black or Black British 196 5% 6%
Mixed or Other 174 5% 6%
Region
London 236 6% 13%
South East 502 14% 15%
South West 363 10% 8%
North East 172 5% 4%
North West 537 15% 12%
East of England 152 4% 10%
East Midlands 382 10% 8%
West Midlands 296 8% 10%
Yorkshire and the Humber 184 5% 8%
Scotland 391 11% 8%
Wales 451 12% 5%

Profile of schools

In this section we analyse how the sample of participating schools compares with the population of schools that are eligible for YPO (such as maintained secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland). The information for England and Wales is drawn from Department for Education's (DfE’s) ‘Get Information About Schools’ database, and the equivalent for Scotland. Less detailed information is available on the sampling frames for schools in Wales and Scotland, and the analysis is based on the information available for each nation for each variable. We analyse the profiles of schools for a range of variables, including school type; regional distribution; urban or rural profile; and proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals.

Type of establishment

The sample of schools participating in YPO 2025 is broadly representative of the population, with a similar profile in terms of types of establishments, regions, free school meals, and urbanity profile. Differences in the profile of the achieved sample compared with the population are taken into account within the weighting of survey findings.

References

1 Or equivalent year groups in Scotland.

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