Laura Balla is the Head of Research for the UK Gambling Commission. She has said that the Gambling survey for Great Britain would help to “fill evidence gaps about the impacts of gaming” and will provide a more solid evidence base in order to “make gambling safer”.
Balla’s remarks follow on from the UKGC publishing its first GSGB dataset earlier in the year. In addition, the Commission’s corporate strategy 2024-2027 was released last week.
The UKGC Head of Research emphasized the fact that new questions regarding the GSGB have been introduced in order to assist the commission achieve one of its main objectives, which is protecting vulnerable children from harm caused by gambling through the effective enforcement of regulatory requirements.
Balla said that screening tools such as Problem gambling Severity index had been used to assess the impact of gambling. However, “recently, the discourse has evolved to recognize the wider harms and impacts gambling can have on gamblers or other people.”
Wardle and colleagues developed a framework to expand the understanding of gambling-related harms. In 2018, the Gambling-Related Harms Act defined harms from gambling as: “the negative impacts of gambling on individuals, their families, communities, and society”. The harms were divided into three categories, namely, resources, relationships, and health.
Balla said that, in light of this, the UKGC designed the new survey questions to help “build a deeper understanding of wider impacts people can experience due to their gambling or that of others, and go beyond the PGSI’s limited insights”.
She stated: “It was never our intention to create a psychometric or headline scale for gambling harms. It is difficult to measure the wider impact of gambling, as it has many different dimensions. The results from such a scale or single measurement would not be useful for our policy and regulatory work.
The new questions, however, will allow us to gain a deeper understanding of different consumer experiences. They also provide us with broader insights into trends and nuanced impacts that gambling has on consumers. We cannot achieve this if we use only the PGSI.
Balla stated that the new questions which would be eventually included in the GSGB underwent various phases of development to ensure they “effectively captured negative impacts and were reliable and that gave us representation in all three domains outlined by Wardle et al” as well as on a robust, sustainable survey vehicle.
According to the Head of Research, during the development of questions, “there were differences in severity” of certain issues. Going forward, the more serious items, such as bankruptcy, relationship breakup and committing crimes, will be handled separately from what the Commission calls “other negative effects”.
Balla says the new survey is a good tool to explore the link between PGSI, gambling and wider effects. However, the language used must be carefully chosen.
The UKGC also plans to engage its Living Experience Advisory Panel in advance of the publication of the GSGB Annual Report, so that “findings” are communicated with sensitivity and without stigma.
In a separate section of the report, the findings on gambling will include the “motivations of people for gambling and their enjoyment”.
In July, the UKGC will publish a technical report detailing its approach to developing questions along with the release of new data for the first annual GSGB Report.
The conclusion of her research was: “The evidence for this area of science will continue to grow in the future, but it may require further refinements.”
This new evidence and our ability to uncover trends will be a great step in filling the evidence gaps about the impact of gambling. We will also have a stronger evidence base to work with to improve gambling safety for everyone.
