gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

Prevalence
Problem Gambling and Related Indices
The impact of legalized gambling problem gambling is a particularly important question. The
first thing to recognize is that significant rates of problem gambling were shown to exist in the
United States in the 1970s even before the widespread introduction of legal gambling (Kallick et
al., 1979). The same is almost certainly true of Alberta, although there are no prevalence
studies prior to 1993 to document how significant a problem it was.
What is available are 12 population prevalence surveys of gambling and problem gambling
conducted between 1993 and 2009. The details of these studies are contained in Appendix B.
Methodological differences make comparisons between surveys difficult. This issue was briefly
mentioned earlier in this report with respect to comparing participation rates for each form of
gambling from one year to the next. However, these considerations are much more impactful
for problem gambling prevalence compared to gambling prevalence, as there is very little
variation (or debate) about how to ask about past year participation in gambling activities,
participation questions are much less ‘sensitive’ than questions about problem gambling, and
the higher prevalence rates of gambling participation mean that methodological noise has a
proportionally smaller impact.
Indeed, Williams & Volberg (2009, 2010) have documented that problem gambling prevalence
rates can vary by a magnitude of 5 depending on which assessment instrument is used, how the
survey is described to potential participants (i.e., ‘gambling survey’ versus a description that
does not clearly indicate it is a gambling survey), how it is administered (face-to-face versus
telephone), and the threshold used to ask questions about problem gambling (i.e., any past
year gambling versus gambling at least once a month). Further illustration of the importance of
methodology is the difference in problem gambling prevalence rates obtained in traditional
telephone surveys versus online panel surveys. Alberta online panel surveys have been
conducted in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 (with the present study conducting them in 2008 and
2009). In all cases, the prevalence of problem gambling was approximately twice as high as the
rates obtained via telephone surveys (it is beyond the scope of the present paper to discuss this
in detail, but the evidence compiled by Dr. Robert Williams indicates that the telephone surveys
produce the more accurate rates) (Williams & Volberg, 2010).
Thus, while it is potentially problematic to make comparisons between surveys, there are some
things that make this less difficult in the present situation. The fact that the methodological
procedures were very similar in many of these studies 71 (i.e., telephone administration, survey
being described as a ‘gambling survey’, use of any past year gambling being only criterion for
being asked problem gambling questions). The exceptions were a) the 2002 Statistics Canada
survey that was administered face-to-face and was described as a survey assessing ‘well-being
71 This is also related to the fact that Dr. Harold Wynne conducted the 1993, 1998, and 2001 studies and Dr. Robert
Williams conducted the 2007, 2008, and 2009 studies.
163