Who gambles online?

[KurtSF]

Let me just add that I agree with almost everything quoted in the post above, but disagree that 2+2 is not a good place to study problem gamblers.

First, as stated earlier, just because you are good does not mean you don't have a problem.

And more importantly, 2+2 is not even close to being made up of entirely wining poker players. There are all sorts of other advantage gamblers here including card counters, sports bettors, etc. And amoong th poker players there are a ton of novices and recreational players as well, and a good lot of degens too, no doubt.

[gabbahh]

LOL

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey. Your responses suggest that you may have concerns in the following area(s):-
Substance use can expand to thinking excessively about drugs (e.g. planning when you can next get them or take them). It might also mean needing to take bigger doses get the same effect or feeling unwell (e.g. sweating or having muscular aches) when you try to cut down your drug use. You may, nevertheless, carry on using drugs even though this causes problems for you or your family

If you are concerned, you may want to consult your family doctor or contact one of the support agencies shown below.

If you would like to enter into our prize draw, please enter your name in this box. We will not be able to link your e-mail to your answers to the survey.

So just cause I took E,C and THC a couple of times last year I might have a problem.

Please ask ppl about frequency of use of illegal substances.

Automatic feedback generated by a badly designed RBS based om extremely vague questions is pretty retarded.

First I do you a favour by completing a way to long survey and then you give me bad advice. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth to be honest.

This survey lacks professionalism (if this survey was held in a b2b setting you would lose all credibility) and I can't believe a good university would approve of a survey like this.

Good luck getting your PhD or chit

[frommagio]

[ QUOTE ]
to imply poker is gambling on a poker forum shows a lot of ignorance IMO - poker is not gambling-its more like playing chess with a short term "randomizer".

Also is whoever sponsors your study pro "relulation /outlawing poker" or pro "freedom"?

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you expect? It's a social science, not a real science. It's not like the field suddenly woke up and got smart.

[frommagio]

[ QUOTE ]

These both institutions seem legit, but I think calling a gambling trust "RIGT" is a rather unfortunate choice of acronyms.

[/ QUOTE ]

[frommagio]

LOL. I decided to take the bogus survey (and that's what it is - a bogus survey).

At the final few pages, when it got kind of personal, I decided to ditch and claim Battaravian citizenship, with a yearly income paid in rupeolios (a hefty load of them, in fact). This crap survey didn't deserve honest personal demographic info.

It asked me for comments, so I gave some honest feedback:

Completely idiotic survey. Poorly constructed, with obvious bias. Most questions omit answers that many respondents want to give, or else they assume facts that aren't true.

Your results will be garbage, because your questions are garbage. Back to square one; hire somebody with a clue.

I guess that's not what they wanted to hear:

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

Don't waste your time with these idiots.

[DoGGz]

frommagio> There results won't be garbage because they will get great data that supports their anti-gambling agenda.

"How often have you found yourself thinking about gambling (that is reliving past gambling experiences, planning the next time you will play, or thinking of ways to get money to gamble)?"

LOL...

[HajiShirazu]

Survey is broken, 3rd page some database error comes up, have tried on both firefox and ie....

[Autocratic]

I'm torn about groups like this. They devote a lot of effort into demonizing gambling and making gamblers out to be victims. On one hand, huge amounts of people are negatively impacted by gambling addictions etc, and I see the point of those who feel it's just a very negative aspect of society. At the same time, the people who feel that often neglect to realize the existence of smart, responsible gamblers, like much of 2p2 (or anyone on Wall Street). These people see gambling in a single light.

[Aleo]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm torn about groups like this. They devote a lot of effort into demonizing gambling and making gamblers out to be victims. On one hand, huge amounts of people are negatively impacted by gambling addictions etc, and I see the point of those who feel it's just a very negative aspect of society. At the same time, the people who feel that often neglect to realize the existence of smart, responsible gamblers, like much of 2p2 (or anyone on Wall Street). These people see gambling in a single light.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, and you shouldn't be torn at all.

I suspect if a proper study was conducted, we would still see gambling come out as a societal ill overall. The point is that this study is nowhere close. AND, this is not some radical group like Gambler's Anonymous which obviously has an agenda. This study is being conducted from within academia and a reputable university. It should be impartial but clearly isn't.

Some might want to say that this survey targets problem gamblers specifically, but I can't imagine what end that would serve except to slander the enterprise as a whole. It targets gamblers of all kinds, just carries badly worded and suggestive questions.

I might, after all, conduct a survey targeted towards 'problem' christians, golfers, drinkers, porn users, fast food eaters, milk drinkers, or whatever else. If the questions are worded this way, the results will be exactly what I expect, and I can support the thesis I have in mind in the first place.

[jxl340]

In response to the most recent feedback…

The feedback about drug use (and any other feedback received) is generated on the basis of pre-existing clinical questionnaires that have been validated in numerous controlled studies with large sample sizes (again, you are welcome to references on request). There is, of course, the danger that this feedback will be given to some people who don’t find it to be relevant, but I think false positives in this situation are less of a danger than false negatives. However, it is interesting to know that getting the feedback is very offensive to some people, and this is something that we will take note of.

As regards concerns about bias and agenda, I would like to reiterate that we do not have any desire to demonise gambling. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are not conducting a randomised prevalence study, and in no way will we be attempting to deduce how positive or negative gambling is on the whole. I appreciate that some people may have a positive relationship with gambling, and we will not be attempting to refute this. However, we ask about a lot of the negative aspects of gambling, because this is the area that causes most damage, and which needs most work. We should be able, from our data, to better understand the characteristics that accompany problem gambling, but we will not, of course, extrapolate from our data that x% of people who gamble have a problem, or that gambling is bad in x% of cases, and so on.

I hope this answers some of the concerns.

Best,

Joanne