National Gambling Impact Study Commission Research Articles

All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States

At the beginning of the twentieth century, gambling existed largely as a popular, if illegal, activity. Antigambling groups won the political battles, but those seeking opportunities for risk taking were nonetheless readily accommodated. Horse racing was permitted in a few venues, but telegraph wire networks made action on the sport of kings accessible nationwide. Gambling on baseball existed in urban areas, largely the province of bookmakers who operated with the tacit blessing of law enforcement. Runners for numbers rackets were part of the daily scene in working-class neighborhoods of major cities, and on autumn Saturdays college football fans challenged the skewed odds offered by syndicate-sponsored parlay cards. Dice and card games flourished openly in western mining towns, less obviously in other regions of the country. At midcentury, Senator Estes Kefauver's committee focused attention upon gambling's ties to big city machines and organized crime. By this time, however, casino gambling was firmly established in Nevada, and in 1963 the establishment of the first state lottery by the New Hampshire legislature changed forever the ongoing national debate: gambling had become a state government–sponsored legal enterprise. At the start of the twenty-first century, forty-four state lotteries flourished, and full-service casinos—in cities large and small, on riverboats, and on isolated Indian lands—had opened across the nation. The last gasp of opposition occurred in 1999 with the tepid final report by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which gave lip service to traditional antigaming arguments but in effect raised a white flag of surrender.

Is control a viable goal in the treatment of pathological gambling?

According to a report of National Gambling Impact Study Commission (National Gambling Impact Study Commission (1999). Final report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.), 97% of problem gamblers in the United States do not seek treatment. Within the small proportion of problem gamblers who enter into treatment, a high percentage drops out. Despite the fact that some researchers argue against abstinence as the only acceptable treatment goal and that regaining control over gambling behaviour appears to be possible for some pathological gamblers (PG), abstinence has been the only gambling intervention treatment goal. The primary goal of this study was to verify whether controlled gambling is a viable goal for pathological gamblers. The second goal was to identify the characteristics that predicted a successful outcome for treatment with a controlled gambling goal. Eighty-nine PGs were enrolled in cognitive-behavioural treatment aimed at controlled gambling. Six and twelve month follow-ups were conducted in order to evaluate the maintenance of therapeutic gains and to identify significant predictors of successful controlled gambling. Results showed that using the intent-to-treat procedure, 63% had a score of 4 or less on the DSM-IV at the end of treatment. That proportion was 56% and 51% at the 6- and 12-month follow-ups. If we retain only those who completed the treatment, these proportions increased to 92%, 80% and 71% at post-treatment, 6- and 12-month follow-ups, respectively. On the majority of the measures, significant improvements were found at post-treatment and the therapeutic gains were maintained at the 6- and 12-month follow-ups. However, few variables were identified to predict who would benefit from control rather than abstinence. The clinical and philosophical implications of these results are discussed in this paper.

An exploratory study of gambling motivations and their impact on the purchase frequencies of various gambling products

AbstractThe global gambling industry is huge and gambling has become a leading leisure activity in many countries. Although research on gambling is extensive, many gaps remain. The objective of this exploratory study was to examine how motivations for regular gambling varied by the forms of game played. Using data collected by the U.S. National Gambling Impact Study Commission, the study found that regular gamblers were motivated to gamble to win and to fulfill their sense of excitement/challenge for some gambling products like lottery, racetrack betting, and casinos. For others, such as bingo and card room games, they were motivated to gamble more for social reasons. The findings have important implications to marketers and public policy makers. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Place Your Bet on Politics: Local Governments Roll the Dice

Concentrating at the local level, this study expands on existing research by measuring the political and economic determinants of gambling policy. Using data from the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, a larger data set of interest group activity, levels of saliency, fiscal stress, and leisure orientation were constructed. This article examines the political determinants from the morality policy framework and the economic variables that produce local gambling policy, their interaction effects, and the mediating variable of institutional structure. The evidence shows that political variables, or the determinants of morality policy, are significant predictors of local gambling codes and ordinances, whereas economic variables lack statistical significance. There are substantial interaction effects of interest groups and saliency, and when mediated by local government structure, unreformed governments experience more restrictive gambling policy.

The Influence of Religiosity on Gambling Participation

Gambling is now a popular legal activity among people around the world. Despite numerous studies on individuals' gambling behavior, few researchers examine the influence of religiosity on gambling participation. This study investigated the effect of religiosity, measured in terms of frequency of religious participation and importance of faith, on gambling participation across four different types of games: casino, track, lottery, and bingo. Using data collected by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission in 1999, the study found that there was indeed a significant difference in the frequency of religious participation between gamblers and non-gamblers. Moreover, it seemed like the more types of games one played, the lower was their frequency of religious participation. The importance of faith, however, did not seem to have a significant impact on gambling participation. The implications of these findings to businesses and public policy makers were discussed.

Assessing the costs of ‘addicted’ gamblers

An article by researcher John W. Kindt, 'The Costs of Addicted Gamblers: Should the States Initiate Mega-Lawsuits Similar to the Tobacco Cases?' refers at one point to research done for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission in 1998-1999 by the staff of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Kindt devotes only two paragraphs to the social cost estimates developed by the NORC team. However, these paragraphs are so heavily freighted with summary judgments and innuendoes as to require a comparatively lengthy commentary. Kindt criticizes NORC team for not providing a comparison or benchmark for the new approach by using both the old and new approaches with the same data. The NORC team was unable to fit both approaches within the constraints of their survey for the commission. But subsequent studies----carried out in Arizona, Nevada. North Dakota and Oregon--provide detailed information on how the NORC method performs in relation to older, more widely used problem gambling screens

Internet Gambling Alarms Addiction Experts, Government

Internet Gambling Alarms Addiction Experts, Government

Trends in bio-behavioral gambling studies research: quantifying citations.

Both the National Gambling Impact Study Commission and the National Academy of Sciences have evaluated the current state of gambling studies research in general while making specific suggestions for future efforts in the psychological and biomedical areas in particular. Recognizing the importance of evaluating the state of the field on a macro level, this paper considers and categorizes several decades of psychological and biomedical gambling research. By examining the number of references to gambling in two major bibliographic databases, quantifiable trends and observations are presented about gambling-related psychological and biomedical research. Two trends in particular are salient: the rate at which gambling-related articles are published in scholarly journals is increasing, and the plurality of these articles deals with issues of cognition and personality as related to gambling.

Report of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission

Report of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission

Analysis of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission Act.

The following article by Keith Whyte represents the first of occasionally reprinted publications that are relevant to important historical events in the field of gambling studies. This article describes the act that led to the formation of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. This Commission released its findings to the President and Congress of the United States during June of 1999.

Follow the Money: Gambling, Ethics, and Subpoenas

On 3 August 1996, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission Act became law and established the nine-member National Gambling Impact Study Commission. Passed by unanimous voice vote in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the gambling commission was the congressional response to a gambling industry whose influence threatened to overwhelm not only state and local governmental decision making but also the objectivity of the court system via test cases to expand gambling. This article examines the potential influence of the gambling industry and its lobbyists. There exist significant congressional fears that the gambling industry could be sufficiently powerful to change U.S. policy and the economy (locally, regionally, and nationally).

Federal Involvement in U.S. Gaming Regulation

The federal government has a relatively long history of regulating gambling, but gambling has not been a very intense or consistent concern. For the most part, states have been left to their own resources in gambling regulation, and the federal government was interested in controlling gambling only to the extent that organized crime was a factor. The expansion of legal gambling to almost every state, the growth of Indian gaming, the need to generate new sources of revenue, the alarming potential of Internet gambling, and the growing impact of the gambling industry on the national economy have stimulated renewed interest on the part of the federal government in the regulation, not necessarily the prohibition, of gambling. The recent establishment of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission is indicative of this concern.

Analysis of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission Act

The following article by Keith Whyte represents the first of occasionally reprinted publications that are relevant to important historical events in the field of gambling studies. This article describes the act that led to the formation of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. This Commission released its findings to the President and Congress of the United States during June of 1999.