The Gambling Cognitions Inventory: scale development and psychometric validation with problem and pathological gamblers

The Influence of Locus of Control and Sensation Seeking Among Undergraduate Texas Hold’em Players

“…Gambling measures have been developed that consider individuals' perceptions of skill and luck. For example, McInnes and colleagues (McInnes, Hodgins, & Holub, 2014) refined the Gambling Cognitions Inventory into two subscales. The Skill and Attitude Subscale reflects skill and attitude cognitions (e.g., ''I am a very skilled gambler''), whereas the Luck and Chance Subscale reflects luck/chance cognitions (e.g., ''I lose because I am having a bad or unlucky day'').…”

Fallacious beliefs: Gambling specific and belief in the paranormal.

“…As is the case with cognitive biases more generally, there is no well agreed-upon list or categorization of gambling fallacies, although different categorizations have been proposed (e.g., Ejova, Delfabbro, & Navarro, 2015;Fortune & Goodie, 2012;Ladouceur, 2004;McInnes, Hodgins, & Holub, 2014;Toneatto, 1999;Wagenaar, 1988).Thus, the first step was to identify all the potential gambling fallacies via a keyword search of all the social science and medical databases (e.g., PsycINFO, MEDLINE, ABI/INFORM Global, PubMed, Science Direct, etc.) through two omnibus search engines (the university library's SUMMON search engine and Google Scholar).…”

“…Although a few studies have found just one gambling fallacies factor (Breen & Zuckerman, 1999;Jefferson & Nicki, 2003;Xian et al, 2008) it has been more common to find multiple factors. More specifically, two factors (Ejova et al, 2015;Ferland, Ladouceur, & Vitaro, 2002;Jefferson, Doiron, Nicki, & MacLean, 2004;McInnes et al, 2014;Steenbergh, Meyers, May, & Whelan, 2002;Williams, 2003) and five factors (Moodie, 2008;Oei, Lin, & Raylu, 2007;Raylu & Oei, 2004). Thus, it is would seem that high levels of overall internal consistency is likely not desirable for a gambling fallacies instrument, unless measured for each factor and/or using a hierarchical measure of consistency (e.g., coefficient omega).…”

“…Instruments or questions that wrongly presume that no skill is involved in any form of gambling and/or fail to specify that the questions only pertain to pure chance games also lack content validity (e.g. Gambling Cognitions Inventory; (McInnes et al, 2014)) as an element of skill is involved in sports betting, horse race handicapping, and certain card games such as poker (Leonard, Staples, & Williams, 2015). Finally, instruments that assess generic errors in thinking or fallacious beliefs without specific reference to a gambling situation also do not have sufficient content validity for a gambling fallacies instrument (e.g., Irrational Belief Measure (Jones, 1969); Irrational Belief Scale (Malouff & Schutte, 1986); Paranormal Belief Scale (Tobacyk, 2004)).…”

“…Personal luckiness correlated positively with extraversion, conscientiousness, life satisfaction, positive affect, and negatively with neuroticism, locus of control, and negative affect.  Gambling Cognitions Inventory (GCI) (McInnes et al, 2014). The GCI is a 33 item Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 3 = strongly agree) list of gambling-related biases, behaviours, and fallacies.…”