Part 3
participants as Level I (score of 0-2), Level 2 (score of 3-4), or Level 3 (score > 5) gamblers (Lesieur & Heineman, 1988; Shaffer et al., 1999).
We present here the types of participants' gambling activities, along with the frequency and intensity of recent gambling behaviors (past year, past 2 months, and past week) by level of disordered gambling. We compared participants who reported experience with Internet gambling and participants who reported no experience with Internet gambling on demographic variables and SOGS scores. We evaluated differences among the three levels of gamblers, as well as between Internet versus non-Internet gamblers, using the chi-square test for categorical data, analysis of variance for continuous data, and Kruskal-Wallis tests for non-normally distributed continuous data.
RESULTS
Response rates and demographic characteristics of the respondent sample
In total, 402 questionnaires were filled out. Thirteen respondents left many SOGS items unanswered and were thus excluded, leaving 389 questionnaires for further analysis.
Continuum of SOGS scores
Of the respondents, 46.8% scored a 0 on the SOGS, indicative of no problematic gambling behaviors. Additional segments of respondents scored 1 (17.0%) and 2 (10.3%) on the SOGS. Therefore, according to the classification system described by Shaffer et al. (1999), 74.0% of respondents qualified as Level 1 gamblers, and 10.6% of the respondents were classified as Level 2 gamblers, with 6.2% scoring a 3 and 4.4% scoring a 4. The final 15.4% of respondents were classified as Level 3 gamblers, with 6.9% scoring between 5 and 9, 5.7% scoring between 10 and 14, and 2.8% scoring between 15 and 20.
Demographic characteristics
Although no statistically significant group differences were found with regard to gender, the three groups of gamblers differed on other demographic characteristics. Specifically, differences among the groups emerged with respect to age, F(2, 382) = 8.58, p <.01; ethnicity, X 2 (6, N = 374) = 23.01, p <.001; marital status, X 2(8, N = 384) = 18.80, p <.001; education, X 2(8, N = 376) = 34.45, p <.001; and yearly income, X 2(6, N = 374) = 12.89, p <.05. Compared to Level 1 gamblers, Level 2 and 3 gamblers were more likely to be younger, of non-Caucasian ethnicity, not married, and have lower levels of education and income.
Gambling participation
All of the respondents reported having gambled in their lifetimes, with 90.0% having gambled within the past year, 70.0% within the past 2 months, and 42.0% within the past week. The most common form of gambling was the lottery, with 89.2% of the total sample having lifetime experience with the lottery. Twenty-five percent of the sample reported weekly or more frequent lottery playing. Slot machines were the next most popular gambling activity, with 81.7% of the sample having lifetime experience, and 6.7% playing slots at least weekly. Scratch tickets were played by 78.7%, with 19.0% of participants playing at least weekly. Card-playing forms of gambling were reported by 70.8%, with 8.7% of participants playing at least weekly. More than half of the participants reported lifetime participation in sports betting (56.9%), bingo (56.0%), and animal betting (52.7%). Lifetime participation in other gambling activities, such as games of skill (40.8%), roulette (37.1%), dice (33.8%), high-risk stocks (23.6%), and video lottery (21.7%) were each reported by only a minority of the total sample.
Internet gambling
Of note is that 8.1% (n = 31) of participants reported Internet gambling in their lifetimes, including 3.7% (n = 14) who reported gambling on the Internet at least weekly. Demographic and other characteristics of Internet gamblers compared to non-Internet gamblers are shown in Table 1. Age, F(I, 378) = 17.68, p <.01, and ethnicity, X 2(3, N = 376) = 17.80, p <.001, were found to differ significantly among participants who reported Internet gambling compared to those who did not. Younger participants were more likely than older participants to have Internet gambling experience. Although non-Caucasian participants represented 15.8% of the total participants, they represented 35.8% of those participants who had experience with Internet gambling.
The comparison of participants with or without Internet gambling experience revealed significant differences in both SOGS scores, F(1, 382) = 40.79, p <.01, and classified gambling levels, X 2(2, N = 389) = 63.23, p <.001. Only 22% of participants without any Internet gambling experience were Level 2 or 3 gamblers. In contrast, 74% of participants with Internet gambling experience were classified as Level 2 or 3 gamblers.
DISCUSSION
We examined gambling participation and problems of 389 patients who completed questionnaires at the UCHC medical and dental clinics. When the lifetime rates of 10.6% for Level 2 and 15.4% for Level 3 gamblers are combined, the resulting 26.0% rate of disordered gambling (Levels 2 and 3) in this study far exceeds the 6.7% derived from general population surveys conducted since 1993 (National Gambling Impact Study Commission, 1999; Shaffer et al., 1999). |
