Awareness promotion about excessive gambling among video lottery retailers.
This paper describes and evaluates "As luck would have it," an awareness program completed by retailers in Quebec Province. This program, which is presented as a two-hour awareness promotion workshop, aimed to inform retailers about excessive gambling. More specifically, it provided answers to the following questions: (1) What is chance and randomness? (2) Is there a link between misunderstanding the concept of chance and excessive gambling? (3) How does one recognise the symptoms of this disorder? (4) How should retailers intervene if they decide to do so? Results showed that retailers developed a better understanding of problem gambling, could recognise its main symptoms, felt more capable of coping with excessive gamblers, and of choosing the most appropriate moment to do so. In the follow-up phase, retailers who had attended the workshop reported that they approached a problem gambler significantly more often than the retailers who had not attended the workshop, and had discussed how to help problem gamblers significantly more often. The practical implications of these results are briefly discussed.
Ladouceur
Robert
R
Ecole de Psychologie, Universite Laval, Ste-Foy, Quebec, Canada, G1K 7P4. Robert.Ladouceur@psy.ulaval.ca
Boutin
Claude
C
Doucet
Céline
C
Dumont
Michel
M
Provencher
Martin
M
Giroux
Isabelle
I
Boucher
Christiane
C
D000328:Adult; D000329:Advertising; D000368:Aged; D001364:Awareness; D007174:Disruptive, Impulse Control, and Conduct Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005260:Female; D005715:Gambling / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011792:Quebec; D040241:Social Marketing; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology*