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Breaking Bad: Comparing Gambling Harms Among Gamblers and Affected Others

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Abstract

This article examines gambling harms from both gamblers and affected others’ perspectives. Participants (3076 gamblers and 2129 affected others) completed a retrospective survey that elicited information on harms they experienced from gambling across their lifetime. Their responses were analyzed through testing measurement invariance, estimating item-response theoretic parameters, calculating percentages, confidence intervals, and correlations, as well as regressions. The results indicated large commonalities in the experience of harms reported by gamblers and affected others. Further, gamblers appeared to ‘export’ about half of the harms they experienced to those around them. The findings also provided detailed profiles of evolving harms as problem gambling severity varies.

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Notes

  1. Affected others is the general term we employ to describe any person with a significant relationship to a gambler who is affected by the gambler’s behavior.

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Acknowledgment

This research was funded by a grant from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. A previous version of this paper has been submitted as part of a research report to the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central Queensland University, Queensland, 4701, Australia

    En Li, Matthew Browne, Vijay Rawat, Erika Langham & Matthew Rockloff

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  1. En Li
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  2. Matthew Browne
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  3. Vijay Rawat
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  4. Erika Langham
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  5. Matthew Rockloff
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Correspondence to En Li.

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Conflict of interest

En Li has received research grants from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation and Gambling Research Australia. Matthew Browne has received grants from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the New Zealand Ministry of Health and Gambling Research Australia. Erika Langham has received grants from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the New Zealand Ministry of Health and Gambling Research Australia. Matthew Rockloff has received grants from the Queensland Treasury, the Victorian Treasury, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the New Zealand Ministry of Health and Gambling Research Australia. Vijay Rawat declares no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Li, E., Browne, M., Rawat, V. et al. Breaking Bad: Comparing Gambling Harms Among Gamblers and Affected Others. J Gambl Stud 33, 223–248 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-016-9632-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-016-9632-8

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