Positive Play

Measuring Responsible Gambling Tendancies

by Alex Connolly

Introduction to Positive Play

When I first joined Dr. Grubbs’ lab at BGSU, he asked me what project I wanted to present for a conference in Las Vegas (yes, a lot of our responsible gambling conferences are in Las Vegas). He wanted someone to investigate Positive Play, and I had an interest in responsible sports gambling, so I decided to look into Positive Play differences in various sports wagering behaviors.

Defining Positive Play

Recent research has attempted to investigate these buzz words of “responsible gambling” you may be familiar with. One recent attempt to measure and quantify responsible gambling has come through the Positive Play Scale (PPS), created by Richard Wood, Michael Wohl, Nassim Tabri, and Kahlil Philander. The term “positive play” is meant to refer to gambling that is more responsible, or positive. There are many aspects of positive play that are meant to combine into a quantifiable version of responsible gambling. This aforementioned scale is broken into four different parts: Personal Responsibility, Gambling Literacy, Honesty and Control, and Pre-Commitment.

Personal Responsibility

Personal Responsibility is what it sounds like. This facet of positive play looks at whether players understand that they hold the responsibility for how much money and time that they spend gambling. Higher scores on the personal responsibility aspect of this scale indicate that people are more personally responsible, and may take more responsibility in their gambling.

Gambling Literacy

The Gambling Literacy subscale looks at the amount to which players hold an understanding about their odds of winning. This is the part of the scale that is often the lowest, indicating that gamblers don’t have a great idea of the realistic odds of winning (more on this in the next blog). If gamblers believe that winning is likely when it is not, they will score poorly on this subscale.

Honesty And Control

The Honesty and Control subscale looks at how players are truthful with others about how much money and time they spend gambling. In addition, it measures how much control they have in their gambling behavior. Problematic gamblers may lie to others and/or lose control of their gambling, and this scale investigates these principles.

Pre-Commitment

Finally, the Pre-Commitment subscale looks at whether or not people consider how much money and time they spend prior to gambling. A lot of recent research is looking into pre-commitment as a way to improve responsible gambling. If people are considering how much they spend before gambling (i.e., setting limits) this may indicate responsibility.

Responsible Gambling

The Positive Play Scale is a recent look into responsible gambling but can tell us a lot about how responsible players are in various aspects of the game. If people are considering how much they are gambling, understand their true odds of winning, are honest about their gambling, and understand that they hold the responsibility for their gambling, then they show responsible gambling habits. While this scale may give us a brief look at how responsible gamblers are, there is much more research into these concepts to be done.

If you are concerned that you might be at risk or are falling into problem sports gambling, this page can help and you can always reach out to us here.

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