Harvard Study Shows Rate of College Gambling Lower than Previous Estimates
College students, as a group, are at no greater risk for gambling problems than their adult counterparts, according to the first national survey of gambling among college students. The results come from Harvard Medical School's Division on Addictions, which analyzed questions on gambling that were included in the 2001 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS).
The survey, published in a recent issue of the Journal of American College Health (vol. 52, no. 2, September/October 2003), found that 2.6 percent of students in a nationally representative sample gambled weekly or more often during the school year-a percentage researchers say may define the ceiling on the proportion of problem gamblers among college students.
As noted in the study report, this rate is very similar to reports of prevalence of past-year gambling disorders among adults from the general population, which hovers around 2.25 percent. So, even if all the students who gamble weekly or more often met the criteria for pathological gambling, college students would be at no greater risk for developing the disorder than adults in the general population, researchers said. The survey also reports that 42 percent of college students gambled in the past school year, a percentage much lower than the 82 percent of adults who reported gambling in the past year in according to a 2000 national survey.
These findings directly contradict earlier studies that found a significantly higher prevalence rate of gambling on America's college campuses than among the general population. According to the new Harvard study, those earlier studies might have found higher prevalence rates for college students for two major reasons. First, the samples used in previous college surveys were not national in scope. Researchers note many focused on students at only one or two schools. Second, CAS researchers point out that in several cases, earlier survey respondents were classified as gamblers if they gambled at any point in their lifetime, including gambling that took place before they entered college. In contrast, the 2001 CAS was conducted using a representative national sample of 10,765 students attending 119 scientifically selected four-year colleges, and the students were asked specifically to report any gambling in the last school year.
The 2001 CAS repeated standard questions used in the 1993, 1997 and 1999 survey to determine rates of college student alcohol use and related problems. The 2001 survey included questions about gambling in efforts to fill the gap in knowledge about the prevalence of gambling among college students, as well as to determine the existence of problem behavior clusters among these students specifically related to gambling.
Of the 42 percent of college students who reported participating in some form of gambling activity during the past school year, a majority (73 percent) said they participated in only one or two types of gambling, and 94 percent of student gamblers said they wagered no more than a few times a month on any type of gambling. Playing the lottery, cited by 25 percent of respondents, was the most popular form of gambling mentioned.
Researchers analyzed six different categories of personal characteristics for potential predictors of being a student gambler, including demographics, lifestyle choices, school status and rate of substance-use risk behaviors. Among all six categories of predictors, alcohol-related behaviors were the strongest risk correlates of gambling.
According to CAS results, student gamblers are more likely to drink alcohol, to binge-drink and to have engaged in unprotected sex as a result of binge drinking. Of the 33 significant correlates that were common among binge drinkers, 29 items also significantly related to gambling. According to researchers, this concordance of risky behaviors suggests an underlying problem-behavior syndrome, or a tendency to engage in several risky behaviors. Although the characteristics were similar, the differences between gamblers and non-gamblers were much smaller than the differences between binge drinkers and students who don't binge. These results indicate gambling has a relatively small impact on the lives of college students, researchers said.
This study was funded by the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders at Harvard Medical School's Division on Addictions.
