Australia's Gambling Industries - Productivity Commission

The second aspect of filter 2 captures those gamblers who gamble less frequently
than weekly on individual activities, but often enough across several forms to be
gambling the equivalent of weekly. For example, suppose a respondent played poker
machines three times a month, bet on horse races twice a month and played table
games at a casino once a month. The annual rate of play is therefore
(3*12) + (2*12) + (1*12) = 72 times per year. Hence, because this overall rate of
play is more frequent than once per week, the respondent is classified as regular
even though no single gambling activity is played weekly.
Even though lottery games are excluded from this filter, the regular group will still
contain gamblers who play lottery games weekly because it includes:
• those who participated in individual ‘other’ gambling activities weekly (and who
may or may not have played lottery games weekly); and
• those who participated in ‘other’ gambling activities the equivalent of weekly
(and who may or may not have played lottery games weekly).
Non-regular gamblers
Those gamblers not classified as regular are, of course, non-regular and comprise in
the main:
• those who participated in any single gambling activity less often than weekly, or
gambling activities overall less often than the equivalent of weekly.
But because the filter for classifying gamblers as regular excludes all lottery games,
among the non-regular group will also be:
• those who only played lottery games weekly; and
• those who participated in ‘other’ gambling activities less often than the
equivalent of weekly (and who may or may not have also played lottery games
weekly).
Filter 3 — to re-classify some non-regular gamblers as ‘regular’
While Australian gambling surveys have found that ‘lottery only’ players rarely
experience problems related to their gambling, a third filter was included in the
main questionnaire to re-classify some gamblers from the non-regular group to the
regular group, based on their annual gambling expenditure, in order for them to be
administered the SOGS. Such a filter sought to capture the following two groups of
respondents:
F.8 GAMBLING