How Big a Problem is it?

Image of shadowed figure blending into dark background - Courtesy of Tembele Bohle@pexels.com

Shedding light on the Hidden Addiction

How do you accurately quantify something that you cannot see and which is hidden from public view? As has been touched on elsewhere on this site, Gambling Disorder (or Gambling Addiction) is also sometimes known as the Hidden Addiction. Secrecy, based on stigma, guilt and shame, often acts to prevent Disordered Gamblers from admitting to experiencing problems with their levels of gambling. This unwillingness to be open and frank means that they often succeed in keeping their own close families and loved ones unaware of the extent of the problem or even conscious of the fact that there is a problem. Many affected individuals remain in denial and are staunchly reluctant to be honest with themselves, never mind with anyone else. Faced with such reticence on the part of those experiencing Disordered Gambling to admit to their own involvement then how can anyone really get a true handle on the pivotal question of just how big a problem is Disordered Gambling within our society?

It is undoubtedly the case that even the 'experts' struggle to find a viable answer to this conundrum and most people tasked with trying to come up with quantifiable answers would probably admit that any numbers based on current research practices will almost inevitably end up understating the problem. Yes, figures can be adjusted upwards to take account of error margins caused by evasion when polling individuals about potentially sensitive behaviours but that then raises the additional problem of working out just what is a fair and accurate adjustment to be used for such inflation. How can you quantify the accuracy of something that has never been accurately quantified?

The simple answer is that without reliable benchmarks we simply cannot, and so rather than worrying overly much about something which we cannot easily resolve let us instead look at what 'statistics' are being collated and made available to the public domain.

Official Statistics

In the UK there are two primary sources of 'official' gambling participation research. The Gambling Commission is the official regulator of the licensed (GB) gambling sector and in that role they commission quarterly telephone surveys asking a random polling sample about their participation in, and perceptions of, gambling activities carried out within mainland Britain. There are also questions on gambling participation which form part of the regular Health Surveys carried out by the NHS every three years, or thereabouts, in both England (including Wales) and also in Scotland. These surveys have tended to place the incidence rates of 'Problem Gambling' in recent years as being around 0.7% (0.8% in Scotland) of the adult population. These sources also estimate that an additional 3.6% of the adult population are at low or moderate risk of developing problems with their gambling. Extrapolating from these figures gives an estimate for individuals classified as being 'Problem Gamblers' to be somewhere in the region of 350,000 adults with an additional 1.8 million falling into the 'low or moderate' risk category. The categorisation and definition of what constitutes 'problem' and 'at risk' gambling when applying to these results is based on full and scaled down versions of the PGSI screening tool.

These 'official' figures are however disputed for both accuracy and statistical significance. Despite being commissioned by recognised professional bodies the actual sampling base used is quite low. The Gambling Commission telephone surveys tend to involve around 4000 respondents and the Health Survey England polls around 8000 adults. These are relatively low sample rates given the adult population of the UK is upwards of 50 million.

Casting a Wider Net

Due to justified criticism about the nature and statistical significance of the official surveys it seems logical that in order to better gauge the extent of Disordered Gambling in the GB population it is worthwhile looking for one-off surveys commissioned by other bodies which draw on larger sampling bases.

One such survey was carried out by YouGov, on behalf of GambleAware, in 2019 and questioned 16,000 individuals about gambling habits. The result from this survey gave an estimate for adults in GB who were 'problem gamblers' as being around 2.7% of the adult population - equating to 1.4 million people. Importantly, it also found that as many as 7% of adults (3.6 million) reported being negatively affected by someone else's gambling. I prefaced the start of the previous sentence with the word 'importantly' because this is not an area routinely touched upon by either the Gambling Commission or Health surveys and yet research on the issue of gambling related harm tends to identify that for every Disordered Gambler there are an average of six other people adversely affected by that person's gambling. When factoring in Affected Others we can start to see that the true extent of GRH affects somewhere in the region of 8% of the population, so over 4 million people in the UK are directly harmed by disordered gambling. For consistency sake it should be pointed out that, although using a larger sample base than the regular "official" surveys, the 16,000 YouGov survey sample base still represents a relatively low percentage when set against the overall population.

High Prevalence Populations

One outcome deriving from surveys that isn't disputed is that the incidence of 'problem' or disordered gambling within the youth population currently outstrips that which exists in the general adult population. The Young People Gambling Report 2019, commissioned by the Gambling Commission, identified that 1.7% of 11-16 year olds met the definition for being classified as 'problem gamblers'. A further 2.7% were classified as being 'at risk' of going on to develop problematic (harmful) gambling behaviours. These are worrying statistics as they suggest that upwards of 55,000 young people in Great Britain are currently experiencing detrimental effects in their lives due to gambling activities and that without intervention to specifically address this issue the gambling rates within the adult population will continue to grow as youths who have already developed gambling disorders transition into the adult cohort.

And if prevalence rates amongst youths exceeds the adult norm then one particular group of individuals exhibits even higher rates of disordered gambling. Far higher, in fact. Studies carried out internationally and in the UK consistently find that individuals in Criminal Justice settings, whether in prisons or on community disposals, exhibit prevalence rates of disordered gambling somewhere between 14 and 17 times higher than that found in the general population.

Big Data

In terms of sampling base size perhaps the most significant research done in recent years which can shed some light on gambling and Disordered Gambling within the UK population was undertaken by a team led by Dr Naomi Muggleton, working with fellow academics from the Universities of Warwick and Oxford. By examining financial records made available to them by Lloyds Banking Group they were able to analyse all transactions made by up to 6.5 million customers. Undoubtedly the largest sample base (in terms of numbers) of any recent research work.

Although the anonymised nature of this research did not allow for directly questioning the owners of the bank accounts in order to determine subjective views on their gambling activities (and thus a PGSI rating for 'problem gambling') it did allow for a purely objective analysis of the effects of gambling transactions on other aspects of their financial commitments and wellbeing - in other words managing to take the 'hidden' out of 'hidden addiction'.

Transactional analysis found that 40% of customers gambled using their bank accounts and that those gambling even relatively small amounts of available monthly budgets displayed increases in financial stress such as falling behind on the payment of bills, mortgage arrears, and even increased use of payday (and other high interest rate) loans.These findings would tend to suggest that Gambling Related Harm is much more prevalent than official sources would seem to suggest and that gambling causes tangible and significant harm even at levels of gambling which fall outside the current definitions of 'problem' and 'at risk' gambling activity.