A prospective study of youth gambling behaviors.

Abstract

Little is known about the course and outcomes of adolescent gambling. This prospective study describes findings from a 3-wave (Time 1 [T1], Time 2 [T2], and Time 3 [T3]) assessment of gambling behaviors among youth (N 305). Stable rates of any gambling and regular gambling (weekly or daily) were observed across T1, T2, and T3. The rate of at-risk gambling significantly increased at T3 (young adulthood), whereas the rate of problem gambling remained stable over time. Several adolescent risk factors were associated with either T3 at-risk or problem gambling, many of which are risk factors for adolescent substance abuse. Findings suggest that important to the origins of young adult gambling problems are risk factors associated with the problem behavior syndrome of adolescence. The rapid expansion and societal acceptance of legalized and high-stakes gambling have raised concerns among public health officials and researchers that underage gambling represents an elevated risk for the eventual development of problem gambling (Jacobs, 1989; National Research Council, 1999). These concerns have been advanced along three lines of evidence: epidemiological data on the prevalence of gambling involvement, epidemiological estimates of problem or pathological gambling, and cross-sectional studies on the psychosocial correlates of youth gambling. The epidemiological data suggest that youth gambling, like many behaviors during adolescence, occurs on a frequency continuum, ranging from no involvement to experimentation, occasional gambling, regular gambling, and preoccupation with serious adverse consequences (Stinchfield & Winters, 1998). Most youth have gambled at some time and typically at an early age, oftentimes in grade school (Ladouceur, Dube, & Bujold, 1994). Participation in legalized games is not uncommon (Winters, Stinchfield, & Fulkerson, 1993a), boys are more involved in gambling than girls, and older youth tend to gamble more often than younger teen-agers (e.g., Acuri, Lester, & Smith, 1985). Some studies have found racial– ethnic differences in youth gambling (Wallisch, 1993; Zitzow, 1996), including a recent study of Minnesota youth in which White and Asian high school students reported lower rates of gambling than the other ethnic groups (Stinchfield, Cassuto, Winters, & Latimer, 1997).