Impact case study database

The University of Lincoln has led a programme of psychology research in conjunction with key industry stakeholder organisations, charities, national and international research collaborators, addressing risk factors and associated pathologies in problem gambling. The research programme combined questionnaires, interviews and case study analysis with experimental studies of simulated gambling tasks and cognition, producing original insights into problem gambling and new approaches to intervention.

Parke led a study funded by the Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT) which examined within session loss-chasing and the effect of stake size on cognitive function and decision making [3.1]. Participants completed a roulette gambling task alongside an “information sampling task” which required the judgement of the number of different coloured marbles in a bag based upon a limited number of “picks” from the bag. When stakes were high in the roulette task, participants tended to make riskier decisions in the sampling task, choosing to make fewer test picks from the bag of marbles before a decision. This indicated that cognitive processes underlying decision making are negatively affected by higher stake amounts. Roberts was also a collaborator on a laboratory-based study which compared decision making in gamblers who primarily used slot machines within betting shops called fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) compared to those that used other gambling forms [3.2]. Consistent with Parke’s work, this showed that the FOBTs group had impaired decision making in an information sampling task relative to non-FOBTs gamblers, even when they weren’t concurrently engaged in a betting task.

Roberts and colleagues surveyed case files for 768 gamblers seeking residential treatment to exam recent trends in problem gambling types and behaviour in conjunction with the Gordon Moody Association (GMA) gambling support charity [ 3.3]. The data showed that whilst the overall level of gambling has remained constant, FOBTs, sports betting, poker and online gambling have become more common whereas horse and dog racing, and the National Lottery have become less popular. Gamblers were also more likely to have attempted suicide, to report a co-occurring mental health disorder, and to start treatment having already been prescribed medication over the 5-year period. Other research by Roberts examined a cross-sectional UK sample of 3025 men aged 18-64 and found that pathological gambling was associated with increased odds of trauma in childhood and life stressors in adulthood including homelessness even when adjusting for alcohol and drug dependence [3.4]. Problem gambling was also found to have a strong association with incidence of violence including intimate partner violence [3.5].

Lincoln research has also devised and evaluated new interventions for problem and pathological gambling. A further laboratory study examined the efficacy of in game “pop-up” messages for ameliorating harm by encouraging people to reflect on their gambling e.g. “Do you know how long you have been playing? Do you need to think about a break? Results showed that such messages had a positive effect on reducing bet frequency in a computerised coin tossing task [3.6].