Report

Young People and Gambling 2026: Official statistics

Gambling Commission report produced by Ipsos on young people and their gambling behaviour, attitudes and awareness in 2026.

Published
12 November 2026

Last updated
12 November 2026 - Changes

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Young People and Gambling 2026: Official statistics

Research design

Trend data

Since 2011, the Gambling Commission and Ipsos have conducted an annual survey into the gambling behaviours of young people in Great Britain. This report delivers the results from the 2026 survey, which explores 11 to 17 year olds current rates of experience in gambling.

The trend analysis presented in this report covers the period from 2022 to 2026. Changes made to the questionnaire before the 2022 survey mean that findings collected before 2022 are not directly comparable with those from the current survey. The 2022 survey is therefore used as the starting point for the trend analysis. When interpreting these trends, it should also be noted that the survey was extended in 2023 to include 17 year olds and independent schools.

A further methodological consideration for trend analysis is that the 2026 survey was conducted as a standalone study, whereas previous waves formed part of a wider multi-client young people's omnibus survey. To mitigate potential context effects, the Commission questions were consistently positioned towards the start of the omnibus questionnaire, limiting the likelihood that responses were influenced by questions asked for other clients.

The sampling approach, survey administration and overall methodology remained unchanged; however, respondents in 2026 were asked exclusively Commission questions, rather than a broader questionnaire incorporating modules from multiple public sector clients. While there is no evidence that this change materially affected the findings, the difference in survey context should be considered when interpreting comparisons over time.

The annual survey datasets are designed to support comparisons between separately weighted estimates for each survey year. As each dataset has been weighted independently to reflect the population and survey design applicable to that year, no common weighting variable is available to produce representative estimates from an aggregated, multi-year dataset. Combining the datasets without developing and validating an appropriate pooled weighting approach could give disproportionate influence to particular years and produce estimates that do not represent a clearly defined population. Trends should therefore be examined using the separately weighted annual estimates presented in the report.

Sampling

The Young People and Gambling Survey is a 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:

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, as were institutions that do not complete the school census.
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 538 middle deemed schools were selected to participate in the survey. In Scotland, a sample of 48 schools were selected from the Scottish Government’s school contacts database. The sample was stratified by local authority and school size. Therefore, in total, 586 schools were selected to participate in the survey.
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.
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

Advance packs

All schools in the main sample for England and Wales received an invitation pack between December 2025 and January 2026. 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 recruitment 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 26 Scottish local authorities were contacted, and 3 opted out of the survey. Selected schools in the remaining 23 local authorities were then sent the invitation letter and information sheet.

Contacting schools

In December 2025, the Ipsos 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:

gain headteacher consent for the school to participate
collect contact details for a liaison person within the school (usually the teacher for a selected class)
select one mixed ability class from each nominated curriculum year group for the school
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	260
5 to 10	157
Over 10	123

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 and Gambling Survey over other surveys, which offer cash incentives. In 2026, all schools participating in the Young People and Gambling Survey were offered a £150 cash 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.

Administering the survey

Once a school had agreed to participate, the nominated school liaison received a confirmation email containing the school’s individual online survey link, a template letter for parents and carers, and instructions for administering the survey. The instructions explained the arrangements for completing the questionnaire and the role of school staff during the survey session.

Pupils completed the online self-completion questionnaire during a timetabled session in school. School staff were asked to ensure that pupils completed the survey independently and in silence, without discussing the questions or conferring on their answers. These instructions were intended to reduce the potential for pupils’ answers to be influenced by their peers and to support the privacy of individual responses.

School staff oversaw the survey session and could provide practical support where necessary. However, pupils were expected to interpret and answer the survey questions themselves. The online self-completion approach meant that pupils did not have to disclose potentially sensitive behaviours directly to a teacher or interviewer, helping to reduce social desirability pressures and encourage candid responses.

Participation was voluntary and pupils could choose not to answer individual questions or stop completing the questionnaire. Information provided to schools also included a template letter through which parents and carers could be informed about the survey.

Although these procedures were designed to support independent and private completion, the survey was administered by school staff in different classroom settings. Ipsos researchers were not present during each survey session and could not independently verify that the administration instructions were followed in precisely the same way in every participating school.

Fieldwork for the study was conducted from 12 January to 12 June 2026.

Response rate

In total, from a sample frame of 586 schools in England, Scotland and Wales, 59 took part in the 2026 survey, giving a response rate of 10%. Overall, 3,867 pupils aged 11 to 17 years old from the 59 schools completed the Commission section of the survey online, representing an average of 66 pupils per school.

Quality assurance

A number of checks were undertaken at key stages of the 2026 Young People and Gambling Survey, including during the sample preparation and data cleaning stages. These help to identify obvious errors in the sample and response data, such as the inclusion of ineligible respondents.

Checks at the sampling stage

The school sample was checked against the agreed sample specification before recruitment began. These checks included:

confirming that school and contact information was present, including school name, postcode, headteacher name and email address
comparing the distribution of sampled schools across England, Scotland and Wales to the population by Government Office Region and school type
confirming that ineligible establishments, including primary schools, special schools, pupil referral units and schools outside Great Britain, had been excluded
checking for small establishments that did not contain sufficient numbers of eligible pupils to participate
checking schools’ statutory lower and upper age ranges to confirm that they included pupils eligible for the survey
confirming that sampled schools were recorded as open and were not scheduled to close before the end of the fieldwork period.

Once the school sample had passed these checks, additional preparation checks were undertaken before it was issued for recruitment and fieldwork. These included:

assigning each school a unique 5-digit identification number
selecting 3 eligible curriculum year groups for each sampled school
checking each selected year group against the school’s statutory lower and upper age limits
checking that the selected year groups were distributed approximately evenly across the sample.

Checks during fieldwork

Fieldwork progress and incoming survey data were monitored regularly throughout the fieldwork period. These checks were intended to identify operational or questionnaire issues at an early stage so that they could be investigated and addressed where necessary. They included:

monitoring whether participating schools completed the survey on or close to their scheduled fieldwork dates
following up with schools that missed appointments or had not generated the expected number of pupil responses
reviewing questionnaire completion and dropout rates to identify whether pupils were disproportionately leaving the survey at particular questions or sections
monitoring interview duration and the overall time pupils took to complete the questionnaire
checking whether questionnaire routing appeared to be operating as intended
reviewing incoming data for indications of technical problems affecting access to or completion of the online questionnaire
reviewing responses to open-ended questions to identify any potential safeguarding concerns raised by pupils
reviewing feedback from schools and the recruitment and fieldwork teams for any recurring issues that required investigation.

Any issues identified through these checks were reviewed by the research team and acted upon as appropriate. Issues relating to school participation and survey administration were followed up through the recruitment team, while technical or questionnaire-related issues were investigated and addressed by the online survey team.

Checks at the data preparation stage

Following fieldwork, a series of data quality checks were carried out. These checks, as set out in the following, ensured that the dataset was complete and consistent, that the questionnaire worked as intended, and that any potentially poor-quality responses were identified and reviewed:

confirming that question wording and response codes had been transferred accurately from the final questionnaire into the survey dataset and supporting documentation
checking that questionnaire routing had operated correctly and that the bases for routed questions were consistent with the intended survey logic
removing records where the respondent had not progressed far enough through the questionnaire to reach the agreed minimum completion point of GC_RISK
reviewing questionnaires completed in less than 5 minutes alongside the respondent's route through the questionnaire, gambling experience and response patterns, recognising that young people who had not gambled were asked fewer questions and could therefore complete the survey more quickly
identifying respondents who selected every gambling activity at the question measuring experience of and spending on gambling, and reviewing these records against other indicators of response quality including survey completion time, repeated selection of the same response option, extensive use of ‘prefer not to say’, responses to open-ended questions and consistency across related questions
reviewing responses to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition - Multiple Response Juvenile (DSM-IV-MR-J) screen for unusual patterns, including respondents selecting the same response option throughout
identifying respondents who selected ‘prefer not to say’ consistently across the questionnaire
reviewing all free-text responses to identify possible safeguarding concerns
triangulating potential data-quality concerns across interview duration, questionnaire responses, routing, straight-lining, use of ‘prefer not to say’ and free-text responses.

Records were not excluded solely because they triggered one automated or individual check. Potential data-quality issues were considered across the respondent’s questionnaire as a whole. Responses were also not removed solely because an individual answer appeared unusual, surprising or unlikely. Such a response may still reflect the respondent’s reported experience and removing it on the basis of perceived plausibility alone could introduce subjective researcher judgement and bias into the data-cleaning process. Instead, unusual responses were reviewed alongside other indicators of response quality as mentioned above. Records were removed only where the combined evidence indicated that the response was incomplete, ineligible or insufficiently reliable for inclusion in the final dataset.

Following the completion of these checks, the cleaned dataset and derived variables were reviewed before the production of the final weighted data and reporting outputs.

Weighting

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

for England, the Department for Education: ‘Schools pupils and their characteristics 2026 – national tables’ (opens in new tab)
for Wales, StatsWales (opens in new tab)
for Scotland, Scottish Government’s school contacts database (opens in new tab).

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% - 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% 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%	30 or 70%	50%
	Plus or minus	Plus or minus	Plus or minus
35 interviews (all who have a score of 4 or more on the DSM-IV-MR-J)	10	15	17
101 interviews (all who have placed a bet on esports)	6	9	10
551 interviews (all who follow gambling related content on social media or streaming platforms)	3	4	4
1,002 interviews (all who have gambled in the last 12 months with their own money)	2	3	3
3,867 interviews (Young People and Gambling Survey respondents, 2026)	1	1	2

For example, with a sample of 3,867 where 10% give a particular answer, the chances are 95 in 100 that the 'true' value (which would have been obtained if the entire population had been interviewed) will fall within the range of plus or minus 3 percentage points from the sample result. As shown in table A.3 small sample sizes reduce the certainty of that the figures obtained are exactly those we would have if everybody had been interviewed, with a sample of 35 respondents where 50% 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 17 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% 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 2026 study; covering all 11 to 17 year olds who participated in the Young People and Gambling Survey.

Table A.5 - Sample profile - Commission section 2026

Table A.5: Sample profile 2025
Sample group	Unweighted count	Unweighted (percentage)	Weighted (percentage)
Total	3,867	100%	100%
Gender of pupils
Male	1,896	49%	49%
Female	1,809	47%	47%
Non-binary	48	1%	1%
My gender is not listed	43	1%	1%
Prefer not to say	71	2%	2%
Age of pupils
11	169	4%	7%
12	535	14%	17%
13	794	21%	18%
14	900	23%	20%
15	799	21%	19%
16	463	12%	14%
17	205	5%	6%
Year of pupils¹
7	471	12%	18%
8	840	22%	18%
9	836	22%	19%
10	820	21%	19%
11	608	16%	18%
12	290	7%	8%
Ethnic origin
White	2,670	69%	68%
Asian or Asian British	543	14%	15%
Black or Black British	221	6%	6%
Mixed or Other	267	7%	7%
Region
London	588	15%	15%
South East	709	18%	15%
South West	103	3%	8%
North East	310	8%	4%
North West	341	9%	11%
East of England	375	10%	10%
East Midlands	124	3%	7%
West Midlands	248	6%	9%
Yorkshire and the Humber	152	4%	8%
Scotland	543	14%	7%
Wales	374	10%	4%

Profile of schools

In this section we analyse how the sample of participating schools compares with the population of schools that are eligible for the Young People and Gambling Survey. 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 the Young People and Gambling Survey 2026 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 considered within the weighting of survey findings.

References

¹ Or equivalent year groups in Scotland.

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Last updated: 12 November 2026

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