Unusual Results for Online Casino Problem Gambling Survey

September 18, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

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The UK Gambling Commission funded a new study of online casinos and their customers. With a strange and interesting turn of events, the results of the study showed very different results than other scientific studies that have been done in other locations around the world.

The survey conducted in the UK was led by Dr. Mark Griffiths, along with Professor Jim Orford. Dr. Grifiths said that the findings of the study "suggest that the medium of the Internet may be more likely to contribute to problem gambling than gambling in offline environments."

The study found, when using the figures from the British Gambling Prevalence Study, that the incidences of problem gambling amongst online gamblers is ten times that of what land-based gamblers suffer.

The results differ greatly with three other studies that have been carried out. The well-known two-year long study at Harvard Medical School, under the guidance of Dr. Howard Shaffer, shows that there is a lower incidence of problem gambling at online casinos than at land-based casinos.

The National Responsible Gambling Program of South Africa found similar results to the Harvard study, in a study led by Professor Dan Rose. The US National Council on Problem Gambling ran a study led by Keith Whyte, which showed slightly different results to the studies by Dr. Shaffer and Professor Rose. Although the results were different, they showed that there was no variance between the figures of the incidence of problem gambling when comparing land-based casino gambling and online casino gambling.

The validity of the UK Gambling Commission's study still needs to be determined. The two scientists who led the study and published the findings may not have been as impartial as they should have been about the subject at hand, before conducting a scientific study.

Professor Orford was involved in the organization, StopGam, which was set up to prevent gambling laws being liberalized, and to help stop the spread of gambling in the UK. Two years ago, he announced that he was looking for allies for the organization.

On a slightly different note, Dr. Griffiths has been know to reject the theory of an addictive personality. The basic theory of addictive personality holds that the substance itself does not cause the addiction or problem, but rather a mental disorder that is a common thread for all abuse issues.

Because of these biases, it is important that the study undergoes a peer review of its mathematical composition in order to assess whether it is in fact valid or not.