Abstract
BackgroundGambling disorders affect about one percent of adults. Effective treatments are available but only a small proportion of affected individuals will choose to attend formal treatment. As a result, self-directed treatments have also been developed and found effective. Self-directed treatments provide individuals with information and support to initiate a recovery program without attending formal treatment. In previous research we developed an telephone-based intervention package that helps people to be motivated to tackle their gambling problem and to use basic behavioral and cognitive change strategies. The present study will investigate the efficacy of this self-directed intervention offered as a free online resource. The Internet is an excellent modality in which to offer self-directed treatment for gambling problems. The Internet is increasingly accessible to members of the public and is frequently used to access health-related information. Online gambling sites are also becoming more popular gambling platforms.Method/DesignA randomized clinical trial (N=180) will be conducted in which individuals with gambling problems who are not interested in attending formal treatment are randomly assigned to have access to an online self-directed intervention or to a comparison condition. The comparison condition will be an alternative website that offers a self-assessment of gambling involvement and gambling-related problems. The participant’s use of the resources and their gambling involvement (days of gambling, dollars loss) and their gambling problems will be tracked for a twelve month follow-up period.DiscussionThe results of this research will be important for informing policy-makers who are developing treatment systems.Trial registrationISRCTN06220098
Highlights
Gambling disorders affect about one percent of adults
There is a great deal of interest for such a resource in a variety of jurisdictions including a number of Canadian provinces
Our recruitment method and telephone follow-up is designed to maximize the retention of participants in the trial. This design may limit the generalizability of the findings as we will not assess the efficacy with individuals who are unwilling to enter a clinical trial but would who briefly visit a site and look at or use one or more tools
Summary
Significance Gambling disorders are broadly defined as persistent and recurrent gambling that disrupts personal, family or vocational functioning [1]. Methods/Design The proposed research will evaluate a full Internet-based self-directed intervention for problem gamblers using a single blind, randomized controlled trial comparing participants who are provided access to the SCTs as Participant recruitment and randomization Following procedures we have used in our earlier studies, media announcements (newspapers, radio, and websites) will be used to recruit individuals concerned about their gambling and interested in web-based self-directed treatment. This number will provide sufficient power to conduct the proposed statistical tests comparing the two conditions, based upon gambling frequency and NODS data from Hodgins et al (2001, 2009), assuming a correlation of .5 between baseline and follow-up values, power = 0.80 and a Bonferroni corrected α = .025 (.05/2 outcome variables) This sample size is estimated so as to be sufficient to detect a difference of about 2 gambling days per month between conditions at each follow-up interval (medium effect size). The proposed hlm analysis will likely have greater statistical power because all observed data are included
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