Gambling Among Young People, 837 kB

that first presented the tool, the two MAGS scales had an internal consistency with
Cronbach alpha values of .83 and .87 (41). In a later study that only included the first
scale the internal consistency was much lower at .65 (compared to .83) (48). The stability
has not been tested. Finally the reliability of Lie/Bet has been proved to be good. Kappa
values of .81 have been measured in the test-retest (43).
general comments on the validity of the instruments
The most commonly used questionnaires, SOGS-RA and DSM-IV-J, have been criticised
by the Canadian researcher Ladouceur, who says that their estimates of gambling problems
in young people are too high. One explanation for this might be that children do
not understand the meaning of the questions. This has been tested by letting children
and young people appreciate their gambling problems with and without an explanation
of the meaning of the questions. With an explanation of the meaning of the questions,
children, in particular those under the age of 12, reported fewer negative gambling consequences
than they did before the questions had been explained to them. The decrease
in the prevalence of pathological gambling was 50–73 per cent for SOGS-RA and
20–29 per cent for DSM-IV-J (50, 51). However, according to Derevensky and Gupta
from the International Centre of Youth Problem Gambling and High-Risk Behaviors in
Canada, the tools are suitable for children over the age of 12 and the criticism is hence
unjustified (53).
Further criticism put forward by Ladouceur is that DSM-IV-J has been used
erroneously in several studies. Instead of requiring four criteria out of nine to be fulfilled
in order to classify a person as a probable pathological gambler, in several cases four
affirmative answers out of a possible 12 have been used (52). According to Derevensky
and Gupta this erroneous classification has not, however, had an impact on the results,
according to new calculations based on the correct system (30, 53).
In a comparative study of SOGS-RA, DSM-IV-J and GA, the prevalence of problem
gambling varied depending on the tool. DSM-IV-J identified 3.4 per cent, SOGS-
RA 5.3 per cent and GA 6 per cent problem gamblers or pathological gamblers in the
same group of young people. The variation between the tools was greater for girls,
1 per cent (DSM-IV-J), 1.5 per cent (SOGS-RA) and 3.5 per cent (GA) (46). The fact
that girls reported fewer gambling problems than girls indicates that all these tools have
a problem with conceptual validity since none of them presume a gender difference.
Moreover, it is impossible to state which prevalence figure lies closest to the truth as
there is no external “golden standard”. In another study where SOGS-RA was compared
to MAGS-7, the tools did not really correspond in their classification of risk and
problem gamblers respectively. They did, on the other hand, correspond fairly well
when it came to problem free gamblers. Of the in total 269 individuals who according
to one or other of the tools were assessed as risk gamblers, only 39 of them were classified
by both tools, which gives a concordance for risk gamblers of 14.5 per cent. For
problem gamblers the concordance was 20.5 per cent while for problem free gamblers
the concordance was 82.2 per cent (48).
The self-assessment tools are based on young people reporting negative consequences
of gambling. One study asked young people to instead say whether they felt they had a
gambling problem or not, which 1 per cent said they did compared with 3–6 per cent
problem gamblers based on the self-reported negative consequences (54). This can
perhaps be explained by the fact that young people themselves do not always know
whether they have a gambling problem or not, partly because the problem is not wellknown
and partly because the consequences of the problem may seem more vague to
young people as compared to adults who for example are unable to pay their bills or