The Brief Addiction Science Information Source (BASIS)

The WAGER Vol. 7(39) - What is Black and White and Read All Over?

Narratives regarding gambling permeate our daily lives in the form of newspaper articles, television shows and radio programs. The media can reflect society’s developing attitudes; alternatively, the media actually can shape instead of reflect these attitudes. Either way, an examination of media content can provide an interesting glimpse into dynamic societal attitudes. With this intention, McMullan and Mullen (2001) examined newspaper coverage of casino and electronic gambling in a Canadian province. This WAGER reviews their descriptive analyses of dominant media themes. McMullan and Mullen conducted a theme analysis on a random sample of 234 electronic and casino gambling-related articles published... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 7(38) - Preventing Dropouts: Compliance-Improving Interventions

High drop out rates can plague even the most well-designed addiction treatment programs. Recent research by Milton, Crino, Hunt, & Prosser (2002) addressed this issue by examining the efficacy of a compliance-improvement intervention (CII) as a supplement to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This WAGER will examine the evidence that pertains to treatment completion. At a local university gambling treatment center, the researchers recruited 47 individuals seeking treatment for pathological gambling. The inclusion criteria required participants to meet criteria for pathological gambling; researchers excluded seven potential participants for various reasons including: not being pathological gamblers, upcoming legal sentencing, and current use of... Read more →

The WAGER Vol. 7(36) - Gambling and Theory of Reasoned Action

What guides the decision to gamble? In their theory of reasoned action, Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) suggested that attitudes and knowledge of social norms indirectly affect what we do by influencing our behavioral intentions, which in turn directly affect our behavior. Research has since modified this theory by suggesting that our past behavior and our perceptions of behavioral self-control also influence our intentions to behave and further, that our past behavior and attitudes, together with behavioral intentions, directly affect our behavior (Oh & Hsu, 2001). Figure 1 displays this modified theory. Figure 1: Modified Theory of Reasoned Action (Oh &... Read more →