Abstract
The Gambling Expectancy Questionnaire (GEQ; Gillespie et al. 2007a) is a 23-item scale assessing three positive outcome expectancies (Enjoyment/Arousal, Money, Self-Enhancement) and two negative outcome expectancies (Over-Involvement, Emotional Impact) related to gambling. It is the most used instrument to assess gambling outcome expectancies in adolescents and it has good psychometric properties. To allow a greater and more useful application of the scale, the present study aimed to modify the GEQ to make it usable with all adolescents, regardless of their gambling behaviour and to verify its psychometric properties. To that aim, the items were modified and the response scale was reduced from a seven-point to a five-point Likert scale. To verify the adequacy of the modified scale, two studies were conducted among Italian adolescents. In the first study (n = 501, 75% males, Mage = 16.74, SD = .88), after having removed four items and relocating another through explorative factor analysis, the original five-factor structure of the scale was confirmed by applying a confirmatory factor analysis. Reliability and validity evidence were also provided. The second study (n = 1894, 61% males, Mage = 15.68, SD = .71) attested its invariance across gambling behaviour status and gender. The modified version of the GEQ (GEQ – MOD) can be profitably used for research and preventive purposes with youth.
Highlights
International studies report that up to 80–99% of adolescents engage in some forms of gambling (e.g., Splevins et al 2010) and that between 0.2 and 12.3% meet criteria for pathological gambling behavior (Calado et al 2017)
Consistent with the expectancy theory, that posits that the choice to engage in a given behaviour is influenced by an individual’s expectations of the reinforcing or punishing effects of engagement in that behaviour (e.g., Aarons et al 2001; Fromme et al 2000; Lewis-Esquerre et al 2005), gambling outcome expectancies (GOEs) have been found to be one robust risk-factor for problem gambling in adolescents (e.g., Dowling et al 2018)
We confirmed that, positive Outcome expectancies (OEs) are related to risky behaviours and negative OEs are negatively related with those behaviours (Colder et al 2014), when explaining problem gambling in adolescence, the negative expectations played a role as positive predictors of problem gambling (Dowling et al 2018; St-Pierre et al 2014), consistent with the immediacy assumption theory (Gillespie et al 2007b; Wickwire et al 2010)
Summary
International studies report that up to 80–99% of adolescents engage in some forms of gambling (e.g., Splevins et al 2010) and that between 0.2 and 12.3% meet criteria for pathological gambling behavior (Calado et al 2017). Given the harms related to gambling behavior for adolescents, several studies have been conducted to identify risk factors for problem gambling (Dowling et al 2020). Outcome expectancies (OEs) are conceptualized as mental “if...” contingencies (Goldman et al 1999), representing beliefs about the occurrence of specific outcomes as a result of a particular behaviour (Olson et al 1996). In detail, they correspond to such a thought: “After engaging in one behaviour, I expect X (Kuntsche et al 2010). Research shows that positive OEs (e.g., Emond et al 2010; Michalczuk et al 2011; Teeters et al 2015) and negative OEs (e.g., St-Pierre et al 2014; Wickwire et al 2010; Wohl et al 2006) have a role in predicting problem gambling in young people
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