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Alcoholism and psychiatry research : Journal on psychiatric research and addictions, Vol. 52 No. 1, 2016.

Original scientific paper

Gambling among Teenagers in Bjelovar-Bilogora County (Croatia)

Zrinka Puharić orcid id orcid.org/0000-0001-5938-8183 ; High Nursing College, High Technical School Bjelovar
Marija Kudumija Slijepčević ; High Nursing College, High Technical School Bjelovar
Tatjana Badrov ; High Nursing College, High Technical School Bjelovar
Nina Petričević ; Zagreb county institute of public health

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Abstract

The term “gambling” refers to investing something valuable into an event with uncertain outcome for the chance of winning money or prizes. Main characteristics of gambling are taking a risk and the uncertainty of outcome. The study included 641 last-year high school pupils. 44,9% of the students had ever gambled. Majority of students gamble few times a month (70,5%), and 6,6% of students gamble every day. The most commonly reported gambling activity is sports betting (63,2%), and they go to betting boots mostly with friends (63.54%). Half of the students (56%) report that their parents know of their gambling habits and do not object them. Most of the students (71,5%) say they do not have family member who often gambles. Half of the students (52,8%) have been asked to show an ID card to prove that they are not underage. Almost all the students (94%) believe that their gambling habits do not interfere with their school success, and many of them (43,1%) believe that gambling cannot lead to addiction, 99,7% would never ask for professional help with gambling problems. Compared to economic school, other students are more likely to gamble if they attend technical school, (OR 4.14, CI 1.93-8.86), vocational (OR 2.88, CI 1.39-6.00) or tourism school (OR 5.65,CI 2.72-11.75) while they were least likely to gamble if they attend general high scool (OR 0.93,CI 0.48-1.82). The risk is greater four times for the technical students. Other factors, like intention to go to university, school success, living in urban or rural place, family income and monthly aloowance, were not significantly related to frequeny of gambling. Public accessibility to teenage gambling and the results of our study stress the need for developing the public health prevention programs for early assessment of problems and intervention for problem gambling.

Keywords

gambling; teenagers; Bilogora County

Hrčak ID:

160020

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/160020

Publication date:

16.6.2016.

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