The Victorian Gambling Study: A longitudinal study of gambling and health in Victoria 2008–2012

The Victorian gambling study is a longitudinal study of gambling and health in Victoria conducted between 2008 and 2012. This study is the only large-scale, general population, longitudinal gambling study conducted in Australia.

Key findings

Importantly, this study suggests problem gambling may be a long term condition and that relapse is common, indicating that long term support and treatment is required.

The study also shows people at moderate risk of developing problems with gambling should be targeted with prevention and intervention programs.  

This study deepens our understanding of gambling and provides valuable insights into problem gambling that informs all of the foundation's programs and services.

The study looked at:

• changes in gambling behaviour over time 
  
• the relationship between gambling and health and other social and economic factors 
  
• evidence about what factors cause some people to gamble excessively and what factors might help such people to recover 
  

The study will help inform the foundation's development of intervention, prevention and treatment options for people who have a problem with their gambling.

Four waves of data collection have included:

• a baseline survey of 15,000 randomly selected members of the Victorian population (2008)
  
• wave two follow up data collection from 5,003 of the baseline participants (2009)
  
• wave three follow up data collection from 5,620 of the baseline participants (2010-11)
  
• wave four follow up data collection from 3,701 of the baseline participants (2011-12).