Early Detection of Gambling Among At-Risk Adolescents. Validation of EDGAR-A Scale

Abstract

Despite the fact that minors have prohibited access to commercial gambling, and legislation trying to constrain gambling, an important proportion declares that they have bet either online, or by illegally entering gambling venues. This situation highlights the need to implement selective prevention programs that requires assessment tools to identify vulnerable groups. This paper aims to design and validate a scale of evaluation for the psycho-social characteristics that predict onset and maintenance of gambling behavior among adolescents. 2,716 students of Secondary Education, 15.12 years (± 1.03) answered a frequency, intensity and problematic gambling questionnaire and a scale to evaluate risk profiles. The resulting scale is compounded by 26 items classified in 4 sub-scales: Accessibility, Risk Perception, Normative Perception and Parental Attitudes. Internal consistency coefficients were: 0.668, 0.728, 0.746 and 0.818 respectively, and 0.811 for the total scale. Results offer a robust support on the structural validity and internal consistency of the Early Detection of Gambling among At-Risk Adolescents (EDGAR-A) Scale, a useful tool for the design and assessment of effective preventive interventions.

An experimental study to examine whether and how Flemish and Dutch harm prevention messages on gambling advertising affect consumers’ gambling-related beliefs and intentions.

“…First, gambling intention toward the gambling brand in the advertisement was measured using three items on a 5-point Likert-scale, ranging from definitely not to definitely (α = .97, M = 1.05, SD = .25), derived from Moore and Ohtsuka (1997): for example, “In the next 2 weeks, I intend to bet money on a game of [gambling brand].” Further, normative perceptions were gauged following Cabrera-Perona et al (2022) by using three items on a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from totally disagree to totally agree : for example, “The majority of people have played betting games” (α = .69, M = 3.51, SD = .74). In addition, we measured participants’ opinion on whether the harm prevention message made them think about the harms of gambling with three items (“The message shows that gambling has negative sides,” “The message leads to thinking about the consequences of gambling” and “The message points out the risks of gambling”), derived from Grummon et al (2019) and measured on a 5-point Likert-scale from totally disagree to totally agree (α = .81, M = 2.86, SD = .97).…”

Characterization and prediction of gambling behavior in adolescents using the COM-B model

“…Another theoretical domain related to the capability component of the COM-B model is “Knowledge”. This domain was assessed through four items of the accessibility (AC) subscale of the Early Detection Gambling Addiction Risk-Adolescents (EDGAR-A) battery, (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74) [ 38 ], which informs us about the degree of knowledge about where and how to gamble.…”