Australia's Gambling Industries - Productivity Commission

suffer from some of the adverse consequences identified in the 10+ group, the
Commission’s estimate of the costs will be understated.
The information on adverse consequences from the Survey of Clients of Counselling
Agencies is sometimes available only for the period of the duration of gambling
problems rather than in the last year. Where they have been used, these ‘duration of
gambling problem’ events have been estimated and converted to an annual basis
using information on the average length of gambling problems (8.9 years) derived
from the Survey of Clients of Counselling Agencies.
Measuring the counterfactual
In estimating the cost of problem gambling, the question of what the situation would
have been without gambling, especially problem gambling, is important. As
mentioned in chapter 10, the extent to which gambling is the primary cause of the
problems we observe has been questioned. Problems with gambling may be only
one of a number of inter-related problems that some people have. At the same time,
such adverse consequences as divorce or separation, are going to happen to many
people even without gambling.
The Commission’s questionnaires asked respondents a range of questions relating to
adverse consequences attributable to their gambling activities. This relies on the
respondent accurately assessing that gambling is the principal contributing cause.
Where an adverse consequence is recorded, the Commission has accepted the
respondent’s judgment that this is gambling related.
The NORC study (Gerstein et al 1999) recently released in the United States used a
different approach. Briefly, they asked respondents questions on a whether they had
suffered a range of adverse consequences for whatever reason. By including all
adverse consequences, whether attributed to gambling or not, the US study was able
to compare the prevalence of adverse outcomes for those identified as problem and
pathological gamblers (using a variant of the DSMIV) with the prevalence among
those who were not problem gamblers. The estimates were of the excess of costs
experienced by problem and pathological gamblers.
The Commission has looked at the results of the NORC study and those from the
Commission’s surveys. Despite the differences in methodology and variations in the
way questions were asked, where a comparison could be made, the prevalence rates
generated by the NORC study relating to pathological gamblers are similar to those
from the Commission’s client survey. Table J.3 presents comparisons where the
questions asked and the groups involved most closely matched.
J.6 GAMBLING