Gambling Harms in Adult Social Care: Developing an 'Introductory' Question to Identify Gambling Harms Among Service Users

TY - JOUR

T1 - Gambling Harms in Adult Social Care

T2 - Developing an 'Introductory' Question to Identify Gambling Harms Among Service Users

AU - Forward, Cat

AU - Norrie, Caroline

AU - Bramley, Steph

AU - Riley, Liz

AU - Shearer , James

AU - Finch, Emily

AU - Stewart, Glenn

AU - Fletcher, Paul C

AU - Manthorpe, J

AU - Wardle, Heather

N1 - © The Author(s) 2023.

PY - 2023/12/1

Y1 - 2023/12/1

N2 - Gambling harms are disproportionately experienced among disadvantaged groups and as such, adult social care (ASC) practitioners are well-placed to identify and support affected individuals. There exists no evidence-based 'introductory' question for practitioners to identify those at risk of gambling harms, which includes family and friends ('affected others'). To develop an 'introductory' question for use in English ASC, we conducted a scoping review that identified fifteen potential questions. Questions were refined through expert panel review groups (n = 13), cognitive interviewing (n = 18), test-retest reliability checks (n = 20) and validity testing (n = 2,100) against gold-standard measures of problem gambling behaviour. The question development process produced two questions suitable for testing in local authority (LA) ASC departments. These were (i) 'Do you feel you are affected by any gambling, either your own or someone else's?' and (ii) 'If you or someone close to you gambles, do you feel it is causing you any worries?' Each had good face validity, strong test-retest reliability, correlated highly with well-being measures and performed reasonably against validated measures of problem gambling. These two questions are currently being piloted by ASC practitioners in three English LAs to assess their feasibility for adoption in practice.

AB - Gambling harms are disproportionately experienced among disadvantaged groups and as such, adult social care (ASC) practitioners are well-placed to identify and support affected individuals. There exists no evidence-based 'introductory' question for practitioners to identify those at risk of gambling harms, which includes family and friends ('affected others'). To develop an 'introductory' question for use in English ASC, we conducted a scoping review that identified fifteen potential questions. Questions were refined through expert panel review groups (n = 13), cognitive interviewing (n = 18), test-retest reliability checks (n = 20) and validity testing (n = 2,100) against gold-standard measures of problem gambling behaviour. The question development process produced two questions suitable for testing in local authority (LA) ASC departments. These were (i) 'Do you feel you are affected by any gambling, either your own or someone else's?' and (ii) 'If you or someone close to you gambles, do you feel it is causing you any worries?' Each had good face validity, strong test-retest reliability, correlated highly with well-being measures and performed reasonably against validated measures of problem gambling. These two questions are currently being piloted by ASC practitioners in three English LAs to assess their feasibility for adoption in practice.

KW - adult safeguarding

KW - conversation starter

KW - gambling harms

KW - local authorities

KW - starter question

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85180107606&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/bjsw/bcad155

DO - 10.1093/bjsw/bcad155

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85180107606

SN - 1468-263X

VL - 53

SP - 3584

EP - 3607

JO - British Journal of Social Work

JF - British Journal of Social Work

IS - 8

ER -