A Descriptive Study of Gambling Among Emerging Adult Males in French-Speaking Switzerland

Abstract

The aims were twofold: to examine the gambling habits of emerging adult males in the French-speaking regions of Switzerland and to what extent these habits predict problem gambling within this population. We also evaluated problem gambling rates and provided data concerning variables such as gambling location, level of information about problem gambling and awareness of treatment centers. 606 Swiss male conscripts, aged 18-22 years, completed a self-report questionnaire. This was administered during their army recruitment day in 2012. Problem gambling was assessed through the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) (Ferris and Wynne 2001). 78.5% of the respondents were lifetime gamblers, 56.1% were past-year gamblers. Four out of ten past-year gamblers played in private spaces and in back rooms. The PGSI indicated that 10.8% of past-year gamblers presented with moderate gambling problems, whilst 1.4% appeared to be problem gamblers. The majority of respondents had never received information about problem gambling. Moreover, they were unaware of the existence of treatment centers for problem gambling in their region. PGSI scores were significantly predicted by the variety of games played. Problem gambling rates among young men appear to be higher than those of the general Swiss population. This confirms that emerging adult males are a particularly vulnerable population with regards to gambling addiction. The implications of this are considered for youth gambling-prevention programs.

Latent Class Analysis of Gambling Activities in a Sample of Young Swiss Men: Association with Gambling Problems, Substance Use Outcomes, Personality Traits and Coping Strategies

“…Results showed that about 55% of the sample reported gambling in the previous twelve months. This prevalence is similar to the rates observed by Tomei et al (2014) in 18-22 year-old French-speaking men (56.1%) and by Inglin and Gmel (2011) in the French-speaking adult population (56.8%), suggesting that gambling is a popular activity in Switzerland. Moreover, although low, the prevalence of DSM-5 gambling disorder observed in the present study (1.0 of the total sample, 1.7% of gamblers) is slightly higher than the rates of pathological gambling (1.4% of gamblers) observed by Tomei et al (2014) in a comparable sample of Swiss French-speaking young men, and is about twice the prevalence of pathological gambling (0.5%) reported by Bondolfi et al (2008) in the Swiss adult population.…”

“…In European countries, twelve-month prevalence rates of pathological gambling ranged from 0.15% to 0.60% in the adult population (Sassen et al 2011), including 0.50% in Switzerland (Bondolfi et al 2008) and prevalence rates of problem 4 gambling ranged from 0.25% to 1.40% (Sassen et al 2011), including 0.80% in Switzerland (Bondolfi et al 2008). Thus, gambling constitutes an important public health problem, particularly in emerging adults and males -a population in which excessive gambling is overrepresented (Tomei et al 2014;Tozzi et al 2013;Luder et al 2010; see Williams et al 2012, for review).…”

Gambling and problem gambling in Switzerland

“…In a recent study [18] conducted in the French part of Switzerland on a sample of conscripts (aged 18-24 years), the prevalence rate of problem gambling was 1.4% according to the Problem Gambling Severity Index [24]. In another study conducted in the French part of Switzerland, prevalence of at-risk gambling was 5.5% in a sample of adolescents aged 14-17 years, based on the SOGS [19].…”

“…According to the Swiss Health Census [16], the life-time and past-year prevalence of gambling among the Swiss adult population in 2012 [17] was 73.6 and 46.6%, respectively. In a study conducted in male conscripts (military service is mandatory in Switzerland) aged 18-22 years [18], 79% of the respondents were lifetime gamblers and 56% were past-year gamblers. The reported prevalence of gambling among 14-17-year-olds was 37.48% [19].…”

“…This explains partly why the number of peer-reviewed published papers authored by Swiss investigators to date is limited. Among studies published in the last 5 years, some have focused on the prevention, assessment and prevalence of problem offline and online gambling in the community [18,[38][39][40][41][42], while others were interested in risk factors associated with harmful gambling [43,44].…”