Sociodemographic predictors of latent class membership of problematic and disordered gamblers

Abstract

This paper reports a series of analyses examining the predictors of gambling subtypes identified from a latent class analysis of problem gambling assessment data, pooled from four health and gambling surveys conducted in Britain between 2007 and 2012. Previous analyses have indicated that gambling assessments have a consistent three class structure showing quantitative and potentially qualitative differences. Bringing this data together is useful for studying more severe problem gamblers, where the small number of respondents has been a chronic limitation of gambling prevalence research. Predictors were drawn from sociodemographic indicators and engagement with other legal addictive behaviours, namely smoking and alcohol consumption. The pooled data was entered into a multinomial logistic regression model in which class membership was regressed along a series of demographic variables and survey year, based on previous analyses of gambling prevalence data. The results identified multiple demographic differences (age, general health, SES, being single, membership of ethnic minority groups) between the non-problem and two classes endorsing some problem gambling indicators. Although these two groups tended to share a sociodemographic profile, the odds of being male, British Asian and a smoker increased between the three groups in line with problem gambling severity. Being widowed was also found to be associated with the most severe gambling class. A number of associations were also observed with other addictive behaviours. However these should be taken as indicative as these were limited subsamples of a single dataset. These findings identify specific groups in which gambling problems are more prevalent, and highlight the importance of the interaction between acute and determinant aspects of impulsivity, suggesting that a more complex account of impulsivity should be considered than is currently present in the gambling literature.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abrep.2016.04.004
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences
Funding Information: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council ( ES/J500100/1 ) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ( EP/G037574/1 ).
Additional Information: © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: Addictive behaviours,Disordered gambling,Gambling,Impulsivity,Psychiatry and Mental health
Publication ISSN: 2352-8532
Last Modified: 15 Jan 2024 08:15
Date Deposited: 15 Oct 2018 10:23
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://www.sci ... 0098?via%3Dihub (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2016-06-01
Published Online Date: 2016-04-16
Accepted Date: 2016-04-13
Authors: James, Richard J.E.
O'Malley, Claire
Tunney, Richard J. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-4673-757X)

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