Australia's Gambling Industries - Productivity Commission

it is likely to represent the more severe problem gamblers in the wider population of
problem gamblers (box J.1).
Box J.1
Estimating the cost from information from problem gamblers
in treatment
A number of studies have estimated the costs of problem gambling by looking at the
prevalence of adverse consequences in the group of problem gamblers who are
seeking treatment. These costs are then attributed to the wider group of problem
gamblers.
This presents two problems. The first is that problem gamblers who seek treatment are
a very small percentage of the number of people typically identified as problem
gamblers, using measures, such as the SOGS. In addition, it is likely that the
prevalence of adverse consequences for the group in treatment is much higher than
for other problem gamblers, because problem gamblers typically seek treatment as the
result of some traumatic event, or when the adverse consequences become
unbearable.
Attributing the prevalence for this group to the much wider group of problem gamblers
would thus be likely to overstate the costs for the wider group.
A second, but countervailing, problem derives from measuring the costs of problem
gambling only for those identified as problem gamblers, using screening devices such
as SOGS. This assumes that the rest of the population does not suffer from any
adverse consequences from their own gambling.
In many cases this is unavoidable, as the information on the prevalence of adverse
consequences is available only for the problem gambler group, and it would be
dangerous to infer any level of cost from that group to the wider population.
Nevertheless, there is a risk of severely understating the cost of gambling if only
because, as the rest of the population is so large, even a very low incidence of
gambling-related impacts may generate significant total costs.
The problem is compounded by some researchers choosing a very high SOGS score
to establish the population of problem gamblers. This is often done to overcome the
criticism that the SOGS generates an excessive number of false positives, that is,
identifying people as problem gamblers when, in fact, they are not. However, when it
comes to measuring costs, false positives are not of great concern as the measure of
the prevalence of adverse consequences will automatically take this into account. That
is, those in the group who are not really problem gamblers will not report adverse
consequences, and as a result the prevalence will be (correctly) lower for the group.
But a measure of problem gamblers that is too severe can mean that significant costs
generated by others are not included.
J.2 GAMBLING