The Evolution of Gambling-Related Harm Measurement: Lessons from the Last Decade

Matthew Browne, Vijay Rawat, Catherine Tulloch, Cailem Murray-Boyle and Matthew Rockloff
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Matthew Browne: School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity, Bundaberg 4670, Australia
Vijay Rawat: School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity, Bundaberg 4670, Australia
Catherine Tulloch: School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity, Bundaberg 4670, Australia
Cailem Murray-Boyle: School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity, Bundaberg 4670, Australia
Matthew Rockloff: School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity, Bundaberg 4670, Australia

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: Jurisdictions around the world have a self-declared mandate to reduce gambling-related harm. However, historically, this concept has suffered from poor conceptualisation and operationalisation. However, recent years have seen swift advances in measuring gambling harm, based on the principle of it being a quantifiable decrement to the health and wellbeing of the gambler and those connected to them. This review takes stock of the background and recent developments in harm assessment and summarises recent research that has validated and applied the Short Gambling Harms Screen and related instruments. We recommend that future work builds upon the considerable psychometric evidence accumulated for the feasibility of direct elicitation of harmful consequences. We also advocate for grounding harms measures with respect to scalar changes to public health utility metrics. Such an approach will avoid misleading pseudo-clinical categorisations, provide accurate population-level summaries of where the burden of harm is carried, and serve to integrate gambling research with the broader field of public health.

Keywords: gambling; measurement; public health; gambling harm; problem gambling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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