The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) shall be updating its survey questions on gambling harm, including a wider range of harms, specifically non-financial ones and harm that is caused by someone else's gambling habits.
Also to be added to in the next survey are questions related to suicide, the UKGC said.
Suggested improvements based on the new survey questions
The questions were tested on the Commission's tracker survey on a quarterly basis, and were refined and tested once again. The Natcen Questionnaire Development and Testing Hub then reviewed these right before the pilot starts in January 2022.
The UKGC said the external review and analysis of the pilot data suggested that even if the questions were "clear and unambiguous", further improvements may be necessary.
In the next survey, UKGC shall be presenting a broader range of questions, including questions about harm from other people's gambling habits and suicide.
The external review recommended ensuring a broader range of harm issues are included within the questions and changing the order of harms questions to present less severe harms first.
Also, the UKGC was advised to change the scaled response options to have more equally spaced responses. This means the regulator must change the lowest level of response to a stronger term to ensure that people experiencing harm were truly experiencing harm rather than the potential for harm.
The regulator was told review the wording of all questions related to "harms from others" as the currently existing form of questions appeared to under-report the number of people they know are gambling so as not to underestimate harm from others.
Lastly, the Commission was recommended to continue data collection on suicide ideation and attempted suicide.
The Gambling Commission aims for the harms questions to be asked alongside core questions on participation and problem gambling in 2023, and become part of their suite of official statistics.
The United Kingdom Gambling Commission regulates most types of gambling in Great Britain. They license individuals and businesses that offer gambling and provide them with advice and guidance. They exist to safeguard players by ensuring gambling is fair and they also promote safer gambling.
Source:
https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/about-us/page/participation-and-the-prevalence-of-problem-gambling
https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/developing-survey-questions-to-collect-better-data-on-gambling-related-harms
