Developing a short form of the PGSI : report to the Gambling Commission

Abstract

The aim of the present project is to provide the Gambling Commission and its stakeholders with advice on the feasibility and suitability of a new brief three‐item PGSI Short‐Form derived from the longer Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) for use in tracking the prevalence of problem gambling in the general population. The present report begins with a summary of the latest developments in the area of problem gambling screening. This is followed by a brief discussion of the problem gambling construct and then a longer consideration of how the performance of different assessment instruments is affected by survey methodology. The next three sections evaluate the performance of the new PGSI Short‐Form in the (a) 2009 and 2010 British omnibus surveys, (b) the 2007 and 2010 British Gambling Prevalence Surveys, and (c) in a large sample of English‐speaking clinically assessed gamblers. The final section of the report provides a summary of our findings and recommendations for the future.