Murray Boyle Cailem, Browne Matthew, Rockloff Matthew, Flenady Tracy
School of Psychology, Central Queensland University, Brisbane 4000, Australia.
School of Psychology, Central Queensland University, Bundaberg 4670, Australia.
J Clin Med. 2021 Feb 2;10(3):549. doi: 10.3390/jcm10030549.
Assessing the harmful consequences of gambling is an area of active investigation. One measure intended to capture gambling-related harm is the 10-item short gambling harm screen (SGHS). Although good psychometric properties have been reported, it has been suggested that the screen's less severe probes may not represent genuinely harmful consequences, but rather may reflect rational opportunity costs. Consequently, it has been argued that the screen may lead to overestimation of the extent of gambling-related harm in the population. The current study sought to examine the psychometric performance of three less severe suspect items in the SGHS. Associations between each of these items and a specially constructed scale of relatively severe "unimpeachable" gambling harms were calculated from archival data from 5551 Australian and New Zealand gamblers. All three suspect items, both individually and upon aggregation, predicted greater endorsement of "unimpeachable" harms, and indicated the presence of gambling problems. Moreover, the SGHS as a whole is highly correlated with "unimpeachable" gambling harms. Including suspect items in the SGHS was found to improve predictions of low- and moderate-risk gambling status, but slightly decreased predictions of severe gambling problems. The results are inconsistent with the notion that SGHS harm probes capture either inconsequential consequences or opportunity costs. They confirm prior findings that harm symptomatology is unidimensional, and that the report of multiple more prevalent, but less severe, harms serves as an effective indicator of the spectrum of experienced harm.
评估赌博的有害后果是一个正在积极研究的领域。一种旨在衡量与赌博相关危害的方法是10项简短赌博危害筛查量表（SGHS）。尽管已有报告表明该量表具有良好的心理测量特性，但有人指出，该量表中不太严重的问题可能并不代表真正的有害后果，而可能反映的是合理的机会成本。因此，有人认为该量表可能会导致对人群中与赌博相关危害程度的高估。本研究旨在检验SGHS中三个不太严重的可疑项目的心理测量性能。根据来自5551名澳大利亚和新西兰赌徒的档案数据，计算了这些项目中的每一个与专门构建的相对严重的“无可置疑”赌博危害量表之间的关联。所有这三个可疑项目，无论是单独还是汇总后，都预测对“无可置疑”危害的认可度更高，并表明存在赌博问题。此外，整个SGHS与“无可置疑”的赌博危害高度相关。研究发现，将可疑项目纳入SGHS可改善对低风险和中度风险赌博状况的预测，但略微降低了对严重赌博问题的预测。结果与SGHS危害问题捕捉的是无关紧要的后果或机会成本这一观点不一致。它们证实了先前的研究结果，即危害症状是一维的，并且报告多个更普遍但不太严重的危害可作为所经历危害范围的有效指标。
