Exploration of the Impact of Gambling and Problem Gambling on Pacific Families and Communities in New Zealand

No abstract.Ministry of Healt

Problem gambling: a suitable case for social work?

Problem gambling attracts little attention from health and social care agencies in the UK. Prevalence surveys suggest that 0.6% of the population are problem gamblers and it is suggested that for each of these individuals, 10–17 other people, including children and other family members, are affected. Problem gambling is linked to many individual and social problems including: depression, suicide, significant debt, bankruptcy, family conflict, domestic violence, neglect and maltreatment of children and offending. This makes the issue central to social work territory. Yet, the training of social workers in the UK has consistently neglected issues of addictive behaviour. Whilst some attention has been paid in recent years to substance abuse issues, there has remained a silence in relation to gambling problems. Social workers provide more help for problems relating to addictions than other helping professions. There is good evidence that treatment, and early intervention for gambling problems, including psycho-social and public health approaches, can be very effective. This paper argues that problem gambling should be moved onto the radar of the social work profession, via inclusion on qualifying and post-qualifying training programmes and via research and dissemination of good practice via institutions such as the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Keywords: problem gambling; addictive behaviour; socia

Electronic gaming machine characteristics: it's the little things that count

A range of gamblers, from low-frequency social gamblers through to problem gamblers in treatment, participated in focus groups discussing the characteristics of Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs) that they found attractive. Analyses of the resulting transcripts resulted in two groups of EGM characteristics being identified as important, one group associated with winning and one with betting. Overall, free spin features were identified in all groups as the most attractive characteristic of EGMS. Beyond that it was smaller win-related characteristics, and low-denomination machines with multiple playable lines that were associated with increased duration and intensity of gambling behaviour. The important characteristics were consistent across different levels of gamblers, with the key behavioural difference being a self-reported ‘expertise’, and ‘strategic’ approach to gambling amongst higher-frequency gamblers and problem gamblers in treatment. The key characteristics all occur frequently and result in more wins and extended gambling sessions. The patterns identified resonated with established behavioural principles, and with models describing the development of problem gambling and addictions more generally

Unhealthy Gambling Amongst New Zealand Secondary School Students: An Exploration of Risk and Protective Factors

This study sought to determine the prevalence of gambling and unhealthy gambling behaviour and describe risk and protective factors associated with these behaviours amongst a nationally representative sample of New Zealand secondary school students (n = 8,500). Factor analysis and item response theory were used to develop a model to provide a measure of ‘unhealthy gambling’. Logistic regressions and multiple logistic regression models were used to investigate associations between unhealthy gambling behaviour and selected outcomes. Approximately one-quarter (24.2 %) of students had gambled in the last year, and 4.8 % had two or more indicators of unhealthy gambling. Multivariate analyses found that unhealthy gambling was associated with four main factors: more accepting attitudes towards gambling (pp = 0.0061); being worried about and/or trying to cut down on gambling (p p = 0.0009). Unhealthy gambling is a significant health issue for young people in New Zealand. Ethnic and social inequalities were apparent and these disparities need to be addressed

Embryonic Diapause Is Conserved across Mammals

Embryonic diapause (ED) is a temporary arrest of embryo development and is characterized by delayed implantation in the uterus. ED occurs in blastocysts of less than 2% of mammalian species, including the mouse (Mus musculus). If ED were an evolutionarily conserved phenomenon, then it should be inducible in blastocysts of normally non-diapausing mammals, such as domestic species. To prove this hypothesis, we examined whether blastocysts from domestic sheep (Ovis aries) could enter into diapause following their transfer into mouse uteri in which diapause conditions were induced. Sheep blastocysts entered into diapause, as demonstrated by growth arrest, viability maintenance and their ED-specific pattern of gene expression. Seven days after transfer, diapausing ovine blastocysts were able to resume growth in vitro and, after transfer to surrogate ewe recipients, to develop into normal lambs. The finding that non-diapausing ovine embryos can enter into diapause implies that this phenomenon is phylogenetically conserved and not secondarily acquired by embryos of diapausing species. Our study questions the current model of independent evolution of ED in different mammalian orders

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Lotteries Literature Review: Final Report

This report provides an overview of available literature relating to lotteries products, based on five specific question areas of focus: • To what extent do lotteries products in general and New Zealand lotteries products in particular appeal to problem and under-age gamblers? Do someproducts appeal more than others and, if so, can this be described? • What policies, programmes, codes of practice and corporate social responsibility guidelines have other lotteries adopted and is there any evidence about the impact these have had on problem and under-age gamblers? • What other lotteries have made existing or new products available on the internet or via electronic media and what impact, if any, have these had on problem and under-age gambling? • What is the role of lotteries marketing in shaping people’s views on participating in lotteries and about gambling in general? • What education programmes or materials have been developed to educate gamblers about responsible gambling and are there examples of ‘good practice’ in this area? The review was commissioned by the New Zealand Lotteries Commission in order that research gaps could be identified and recommendations made for research that the New Zealand Lotteries Commission could potentially contract. The review consisted of an extensive search of library and other electronic databases, personal specialist collections and grey literature. Professional and personal networks were also drawn on to locate unpublished reports and more especially, organisational documents relating to social responsibility and/or educational programmes and materials that might otherwise not have been easily accessible via the public domain. Relevant documentation was accessed and critically reviewed. Background and contextual information is provided in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 outlines the methodology used. The literature review (Chapter 3) comprises the main body of the report and is followed by the conclusion (Chapter 4), identified research gaps (Chapter 5) and recommendations for research (Chapter 6). Key points from the review follow, grouped under the five questions areas of focus.New Zealand Lotteries Commissio

New Zealand National Gambling Study: 2018 Participant Re-contact and Implications for a 2019 Interview Wave

Introduction The National Gambling Study (NGS) is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of adults aged 18 years and older, designed to provide information on the prevalence, incidence, nature and effects of gambling in New Zealand. Participants (N=6,251) were recruited in 2012 via face-to-face household recruitment and computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPI). It was designed as a multi-stage, stratified, probability-proportional-to-size sample with oversampling of Māori, Pacific people and Asian people, so that statistical analyses could be conducted on sub-samples by ethnicity. In 2013, one year after initial recruitment and interviewing, 3,745 participants were re-interviewed. The reduced sample was partly due to insufficient budget to attempt re-contact of all participants (only attempted re-contact with 5,266 participants) and partly due to attrition. Numbers re-interviewed in 2014 and 2015 were 3,115 and 2,770, respectively. As the number of moderate-risk and problem gamblers in the NGS is relatively small (about two percent of participants), an additional cohort of 106 adult moderate-risk and problem gamblers was recruited from gambling venues and via advertisements in 2014/15, and reinterviewed in 2015/16. An analysis of data from this additional cohort concluded that: “… it is feasible to combine the MR/PG cohort with the NGS moderate-risk/problem gamblers in order to conduct sub-group analyses, as the two cohorts are similar in the majority of respects. However, as there are some differences between the cohorts, dependent on the analyses being undertaken, weightings may have to be applied to the MR/PG cohort to make it more representative of the general population moderate-risk and problem gamblers.” (Bellringer, Prah, Garrett & Abbott, 2018, p. 7) The NGS was conducted by the Gambling and Addictions Research Centre at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in collaboration with the National Research Bureau (NRB), an independent research company. In all years, NRB recruited the participants (apart from the additional cohort in 2014/15) and conducted all face-to-face interviews.Ministry of Healt