Abstract
So-called “effective schools” are characterised by properties such as a strong and purposeful school leadership and a favourable school ethos. In a previous study we showed that a school’s degree of teacher-rated ethos was inversely associated with student gambling and risk gambling. Building on these findings, the current study aims to examine the associations that teachers’ ratings of the school leadership share with gambling and risk gambling among students in the second grade of upper secondary school in Stockholm (age 17–18 years). Data were drawn from the Stockholm School Survey and the Stockholm Teacher Survey with information from 5191 students and 1061 teachers in 46 upper secondary schools. School-level information from administrative registers was also linked to the data. The statistical method was two-level binary logistic regression analysis. Teachers’ average ratings of the school leadership were inversely associated with both gambling (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.93–0.998, p = 0.039) and risk gambling (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.89–0.99, p = 0.031) among upper secondary students, whilst adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics at the student and the school level. The findings lend further support to the hypothesis that characteristics of effective schools may reduce students’ inclination to engage in gambling and risk gambling behaviours.
Highlights
Adolescent problem gambling has been declared as an important public health issue [1]
Girls were less likely than boys to have been gambling during the past 12 months, whereas students not living with two parents in the same household were more likely to have gambled than those living with two parents
Risk gambling was inversely associated with the school proportion of students with parental post-secondary education, whereas there was no statistically significant association between the school proportion of students with foreign background and risk gambling
Summary
Adolescent problem gambling has been declared as an important public health issue [1]. Acting early to prevent youth from getting gambling problems is important [2,3]. For about three percent of them the activity can be classified as at risk or problem gambling [4]. While earlier research on adolescent gambling has largely focused determinants at the individual- and the family-level studies, expanding this knowledge by exploring the influence of other contexts on youth gambling areparticularly needed [3,5]. Both theory [6] and research into other risk behaviours [7,8,9]
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