Report: Adolescent Gambling in the ACT, 2003–04
Adolescent Gambling in the ACT presents key findings of a 2003-2004 study involving more than 900 secondary school students from 18 schools in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).Gambling frequency:
Students were asked to indicate the frequency of their gambling for the year prior to completing the survey. The results showed:
- 29.6% of students reported that they had never gambled,
- 60.4% reported infrequent gambling, and
- 10% said they gambled frequently (i.e. weekly or more often).
Number (%) of male and female adolescents gambling at each frequency:
| Gambling frequency (n = 898) | |||
| Never n (%) |
Infrequent n (%) |
Frequent n (%) |
|
| Male | 127 (27.5) | 270 (58.4) | 65 (14.1) |
| Female | 139 (31.9) | 272 (62.4) | 25 (5.7) |
| Overall | 266 (29.6) | 542 (60.4) | 90 (10.0) |
- The most popular type of gambling based upon overall participation was private card games (40%) and bingo/scratch cards (41%), racing (32%) and gambling on sporting events (26%).
- 6.1% of students had gambled on the Internet in the past year, making it one of the least popular forms of gambling.
- Males were more likely than females to be frequent gamblers. Boys were also more likely to gamble on card games, racing, sports events and scratch tickets, but there were no differences between males and females for lottery or poker machine gambling.
- Young people indicated that 72% of their parents gamble, a rate very similar to the overall national average. There was a significant association between the frequency of adolescent and parental gambling involvement.
- The social context of adolescent gambling varied according to type of gambling activity. Card games were predominantly played with friends. Poker machine and Internet gambling were most commonly undertaken alone, whereas racing, lottery and scratch card gambling were more likely to be undertaken with parents.