Gambling Among Young People, 837 kB

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VGS, Victorian Gambling Screen, is a tool that was developed in Australia for both adults and young
people. It is primarily intended for clinical use to assess the need for care. It has, however, been used
in a couple of prevalence studies. The tool can be used as a self-assessment questionnaire or as a basis
for a structured interview. It consists of 21 questions divided into three scales that are presumed to
measure different dimensions related to pathological gambling:
• Gambling behaviour and negative consequences of gambling on the individual.
• The negative consequences of gambling on near ones and dear ones.
• How much you like to gamble, i.e. the degree of pleasure or the positive consequences of gambling
on the individual.
Individuals are divided into the following groups: gamblers without problems, risk gamblers
(Borderline Problem) and problem gamblers (44).
The quality of the tools
Some of the tools described above have never been studied from the quality point of
view. SOGS-RA, DSM-IV-MR-J, MAGS and Lie/Bet have, however, been studied and
studies indicate that the tools have both their merits and their shortcomings. The quality
of a screen is described using the terms reliability and validity.
validity
By validity we mean the degree to which a tool measures what it aims to measure, i.e. in
this case gambling problems and pathological gambling. One yardstick for validity is
conceptual validity which entails studying the extent to which a tool corresponds to the
theory of what you wish to measure. Another is criteria validity where test results are
compared with another external measurement (criterion) of the same behaviour in
order to establish how well these tally. One problem with all the self-assessment tools
used in this area is the lack of criteria validity, i.e. the results obtained for gambling problems
in a specific population cannot be compared with an external standard criterion.
There is currently no generally accepted standard criterion for gambling problems in
young people. It is therefore not possible to say that a prevalence rate of 5 per cent as
regards gambling problems measured using for example SOGS-RA or DSM-IV-MR-J
in a given population is a “true” or “false” prevalence rate since there is no agreement
on what it is that is being measured. Most tools use the clinical definition of pathological
gambling in accordance with DSM-IV as a criterion, but it is unclear whether a clinical
diagnosis is a suitable external criterion for gambling problems in normal populations.
It is also unclear the extent to which the clinical criteria are applicable to the group
“young people” since they have been developed to diagnose pathological gambling in
adults.
Several studies have studied the validity of SOGS-RA. The conceptual validity of
SOGS-RA has both weaknesses and strengths. The original study (39) established that
there was a significant correlation in the number of SOGS-RA points between how
much you gamble throughout your lifetime (r = .39), the gambling frequency in the last
year (r = .54) and how much you have spent on gambling in the last year (r = .42). The
study also found that of the adolescents who scored 3 or more points, 92 per cent said
that they gambled at least once a month. The corresponding figure for the adolescents