Assessing potential brief screening questions for use within different social care‐related contexts to identify individuals experiencing gambling‐related harms: A scoping review (original) (raw)

Gambling Harms in Adult Social Care: Developing an ‘Introductory’ Question to Identify Gambling Harms Among Service Users

British Journal of Social Work, 2023

Gambling harms are disproportionately experienced among disadvantaged groups and as such, adult social care (ASC) practitioners are well-placed to identify and support affected individuals. There exists no evidence-based 'introductory' question for practitioners to identify those at risk of gambling harms, which includes family and friends ('affected others'). To develop an 'introductory' question for use in English ASC, we conducted a scoping review that identified fifteen potential questions.

A Quick and Simple Screening Method for Pathological and Problem Gamblers in Addiction Programs and Practices

The American Journal on Addictions, 2011

Despite high rates of comorbidity among pathological gambling, substance use disorders, and other psychiatric conditions, health professionals rarely screen their clients for gambling problems. We report on the performance of the NODS-CLiP, an existing brief, three-item screen for problem and pathological gambling, and an alternative four-item screen that demonstrates improved sensitivity, good positive and negative predictive power and invariance across key demographic groups. Given high rates of comorbidity, routine and accurate identification of gambling-related problems among individuals seeking help for substance abuse and related disorders is important. The original and the alternative brief screens are likely to be useful in a range of clinical settings.

Screening and Treatment for Co-occurring Gambling and Substance Use: A Scoping Review

Journal of Gambling Studies

There is a high prevalence of gambling harms co-occurring with substance use harms. Where harms are co-occurring, they may be experienced as more severe. However, there is little evidence that services are systematically screening for such co-occurring harms in treatment-seeking populations. Furthermore, treatment modalities remain relatively under-developed, with treatment usually addressing only one source of harm.This scoping review looks at the current literature on screening and therapeutic interventions for co-occurring gambling and substance use harms to understand how co-occurring harms may be managed in a treatment setting. It draws together available data on the intersections of substance use harms and gambling related harms, in a treatment context.This research identifies a range of potentially useful validated tools for clinicians in substance use treatment settings to screen for gambling harms. For workers in gambling treatment settings who are seeking validated tools t...

Validation of the Gambling Disorder Screening Questionnaire, a self-administered diagnostic questionnaire for gambling disorder based on the DSM-5 criteria

Rivista di psichiatria, 2016

AIM The DSM-5 has modified the diagnostic criteria for gambling disorder, compared to the fourth edition of the manual; new diagnostic instruments are therefore needed. This study evaluated the psychometric characteristics of the Gambling Disorder Screening Questionnaire (GDSQ), a self-report questionnaire based on the DSM-IV and DSM-5 criteria for Gambling Disorder, measuring its validity, internal consistency, and submitting the questionnaire to a principal components analysis. METHODS 71 patients from a gambling disorder outpatient clinic and 70 controls were evaluated with the GDSQ, the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), and a psychiatric interview. RESULTS The test showed a good sensibility, specificity, internal consistency, concurrent validity with the SOGS. The exclusion of the “illegal acts” item, and the lowering of the cut-off score to four positive items, as suggested by the DSM-5 criteria, improved the test sensibility and internal consistency. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION...

Harmonizing Screening for Gambling Problems in Epidemiological Surveys – Development of the Rapid Screener for Problem Gambling (RSPG)

Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2016

Background and aims: The aim of this study was to test the screening properties of several combinations of items from gambling scales, in order to harmonize screening of gambling problems in epidemiological surveys. The objective was to propose two brief screening tools (three items or less) for a use in interviews and self-administered questionnaires. Methods: We tested the screening properties of combinations of items from several gambling scales, in a sample of 425 gamblers (301 non-problem gamblers and 124 disordered gamblers). Items tested included interview-based items (Pathological Gambling section of the DSM-IV, lifetime history of problem gambling, monthly expenses in gambling, and abstinence of 1 month or more) and self-report items (South Oaks Gambling Screen, Gambling Attitudes, and Beliefs Survey). The gold standard used was the diagnosis of a gambling disorder according to the DSM-5. Results: Two versions of the Rapid Screener for Problem Gambling (RSPG) were developed: the RSPG-Interview (RSPG-I), being composed of two interview items (increasing bets and loss of control), and the RSPG-Self-Assessment (RSPG-SA), being composed of three self-report items (chasing, guiltiness, and perceived inability to stop). Discussion and conclusions: We recommend using the RSPG-SA/I for screening problem gambling in epidemiological surveys, with the version adapted for each purpose (RSPG-I for interview-based surveys and RSPG-SA for self-administered surveys). This first triage of potential problem gamblers must be supplemented by further assessment, as it may overestimate the proportion of problem gamblers. However, a first triage has the great advantage of saving time and energy in large-scale screening for problem gambling.

The nature of gambling-related harm for adults with health and social care needs: an exploratory study of the views of key informants

Primary Health Care Research & Development, 2019

Aim: To explore the views of professionals working within health, care and other agencies about harmful gambling among adults with health and social care needs. Background: Gambling is increasingly seen as a public health rather than an individual problem. Opportunities to gamble have grown in England in the last decade since the liberalisation of the gambling industry meaning that gambling is widely available, accessible and advertised within society. An estimated two million people in the UK are at risk of developing a gambling problem, some of whom may be adults with health and social care needs. Methods: Twenty-three key informants from primary care, social care services and third sector organisations in England were interviewed about their understanding of the risks to adults with health and social care needs from gambling participation. Findings: Thematic analysis revealed four themes: (1) gambling-related harm as a public health problem; (2) identification of groups of adults...

The Victorian Gambling Screen: Reliability and Validation in a Clinical Population

Journal of Gambling Studies, 2010

There is a need to establish reliability and the various forms of validity in all measures in order to feel confident in the use of such tools across a wide diversity of settings. The aim of this study is to describe the reliability and validity of the Victorian Gambling Screen (VGS) and in particular one of the sub-scales (Harm to Self-HS) in a specialist problem gambling treatment service in Adelaide, Australia. Sixty-seven consecutive gamblers were assessed using a previously validated clinical interview and the VGS (Ben-Tovim et al., The Victorian Gambling Screen: project report. Victorian Research Panel, Melbourne, 2001). The internal consistency of the combined VGS scales had a Cronbach's alpha of .85 with the HS scale .89. There was satisfactory evidence of convergent validity which included moderate correlations with another measure of gambling-the South Oaks Gambling Screen. There were also moderate correlations with other measures of psychopathology. Finally, how the VGS may best be used in clinical settings is discussed. Keywords Gambling measurement Á Victorian Gambling Screen Á Problem gambling Á Treatment Background The ability to describe and measure gamblers who are experiencing difficulty has challenged researchers over many years, resulting in numerous terms including; pathological, compulsive, addictive, problem and excessive gambling. There are many tools which purport to screen for and/or diagnose problem gambling. The most well known of which is the South Oaks Gambling Screen-SOGS (Lesieur and Blume 1987) and measures based

Types of gambling and levels of harm: A UK study to assess severity of presentation in a treatment-seeking population

Journal of behavioral addictions, 2016

Background and aim Previous international research emphasized that some forms of gambling are more "addictive" than others. More recently, research has shown that we should shift our attention from the type of gambling activity to the level of involvement in a number of different gambling activities. The aim of our study was to verify whether a higher Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) score was associated with particular gambling activities and evaluate the impact of involvement on gambling behavior. Methods A total of 736 treatment-seeking individuals with gambling disorder were assessed at the National Problem Gambling Clinic in London. First, the independent two-sample t-test and the Mann-Whitney test were used to verify if the PGSI score changed significantly according to the gambling activity at a bivariate level. Second, we conducted a cluster analysis and finally, we fitted a linear regression model in order to verify if some variables are useful to predict gam...

Validation of a short screen for gambling related harm

It is common for jurisdictions tasked with minimising gambling-related harm to conduct problem gambling prevalence studies for the purpose of monitoring the impact of gambling to the community. However, given that both public health theory and empirical findings suggest that harms can occur without individuals satisfying clinical criteria of addiction, there is a recognized conceptual disconnect between the prevalence of clinical problem gamblers, and aggregate harm to the community. Starting with an initial item pool of 72 specific harms caused by problematic gambling, our aim was to develop a short gambling harms scale (SGHS) to screen for the presence and degree of harm caused by gambling. An Internet panel of 1524 individuals who had gambled in the last year completed a 72-item checklist, along with the Personal Wellbeing Index, the PGSI, and other measures. We selected 10 items for the SGHS, with the goals of maximising sensitivity and construct coverage. Psychometric analysis suggests very strong reliability, homogeneity and unidimensionality. Non-zero responses on the SGHS were associated with a large decrease in personal wellbeing, with wellbeing decreasing linearly with the number of harms indicated. We conclude that weighted SGHS scores can be aggregated at the population level to yield a sensitive and valid measure of gambling harm.