NZ Gaming Column

It’s all in the question

The Health Sponsorship Council have just published the latest investigation into New Zealand’s views and experiences of gambling and gambling related harm. This report is supposed to be the baseline data by which Government and its agencies, the Ministry of Health and the Department of Internal Affairs, will measure the effectiveness of the social marketing programme being funded by the problem gambling levy. It is very positive that at least some baseline research has been used and some indicators established. It is a little surprising that the first phase of the campaign was initiated prior to the report being completed. One might have expected that some of the results of the baseline data may have coloured the nature and flavour of the social marketing campaign.

What is of more concern is what appears to be a new definition of harmful gambling. I’m sure that most in the industry and indeed the wider community would assume that harmful gambling is where someone is gambling out of control and to an extent that is greater than they can afford resulting in deprivation and harm to themselves, family and the wider community.

The question asked in this piece of research seems to redefine the notion of harmful gambling. The question asked was whether or not during the last 12 months they had had a day or an outing where at the end of it they looked back and thought to themselves, “I really overdid that, I spent more time and money gambling than I meant to”. The result of the answer to this question then translates into the executive summary as saying that “Just under one tenth (9%) of adults had gambled to a harmful level during the last 12 months while almost one quarter (24%) of adults said they had done so at sometime in their lives”. Thus we now have a picture painted in the media that almost 10% of the adult population experience, or have experienced, harmful gambling. Unfortunately the majority of the general public are not going to get beyond the headlines. Harmful gambling will be associated with problem gambling and a perception created that problem gambling is at least ten fold more than the reality.

Had the Health Sponsorship Council utilised some industry personnel as part of their external advisors’ group, as was offered, then the wording of the questions and the subsequent interpretation of the data could have resulted in an important piece of research which all stakeholders could buy in to and adopt as a genuine baseline. The nature of the questions asked and the subsequent spin severely limits the credibility and ongoing usefulness of this exercise.

Bruce Robertson
Chief Executive
Hospitality Association of NZ

24 January 2008