New methodology will make it hard to draw conclusions from latest UK Gambling Commission survey
EPIC Global Solutions’ research manager Anca-Maria Gherghel and research associate Anneke Stols (pictured) have been looking at the new methodology being adopted in the Gambling Commission’s Gambling Survey for Great Britain – their official statistics on gambling participation – and explain that the change in approach will mean we’ll need a further run of datasets in order to start assessing trends or drawing meaningful conclusions…
The UK’s Gambling Commission has been working towards improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of reporting gambling participation results and allow comparison and trend analysis in the years to come. After rigorous testing of the new methodology, the Gambling Commission will release the official 2023 statistics on Thursday 25th July 2024.
As a result of the changes made, the Gambling Commission made the following statement:
“These statistics comprise our official statistics on gambling participation. The data presented from the GSGB is not comparable to previous gambling survey publications due to changes in the methodology.”
Therefore, it is important to note some changes that have been made which had an impact on how we look at the gambling participation results.
At first glance, the gambling participation rates are different in the previous (older) methodology (44%) and in the new methodology (48% that remained consistent over two consecutive waves using the new methodology). This does not necessarily mean that there is an increase in gambling participation, it could rather mean that gambling participation rates are now determined differently, and participants recruited differently.
The new methodology has taken into consideration most relevant changes in the context, e.g. how people are moving to more online participation, and made access to participate easier. They also take into consideration the biases that might occur in the new contexts.
In terms of exact changes made:
• The main change was related to the way participants were recruited and how data was collected (e.g. from telephone interviews and in-person administration) to postal and push to web notifications which resulted in self-administration) – this reduced the potential impact of the data collector and mitigate social desirability.
• Secondly, there is a change in the main focus of the surveys that are being used. Previous reporting on gambling participation was done as part of a Health survey and then followed-up with interviews, whereas the new survey is now only focused on gambling and well-being.
Those changes were made since previous research (Sturgis & Kuha, 2022) suggests that reporting as part of health surveys can lead to under-reporting of gambling participation and activities, while reporting during interviews or in the presence of others might lead to under-reporting due to privacy concerns, which could impact responses.
Alternatively, the pilot study (Ashford et al., 2022) as well as the study by Sturgis and Kuha (2022) suggest that online surveys result in higher estimates of problem gambling. This could mean that a larger group of gambling participants might have opted for the online survey. Therefore, postal surveys were also included, and extensive pilot and experimental research was done to address any potential bias.
We look forward to using future statistics released by the Gambling Commission to benchmark the work that we do at EPIC with different at-risk groups of people.
Anca-Maria Gherghel, Research Manager, EPIC Global Solutions
Anneke Stols, Research Associate, EPIC Global Solutions
For an in-depth explanation of all the changes to the methodology that is being adopted from this week onwards, please visit ‘Guidance on using statistics from the Gambling Survey for Great Britain’, published by the Gambling Commission.
References
Ashford, R., Bates, B., Bergli, C., Purdon, S., Bryson, C. & Wardle, H. (2022). Gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling survey: Pilot Stage. NatCen Social Research & The Gambling Commission.
Sturgis, P. & Kuha, J. (2022). How survey mode affects estimates of the prevalence of gambling harm: a multisurvey study. Public Health, 204, 63-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2021.12.014.
The Gambling Commission (2024) Statistics on gambling participation – Year 1 (2023), wave 2: Official statistics. Retrieved from https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/statistics-on-gambling-participation-year-1-2023-wave-2-official-statistics
