The Cause and Effect of Gambling - Research Proposal Example

THE CAUSE AND EFFECT OF GAMBLING, RESEARCH PROPOSAL College The Cause and Effect of Gambling, Research Proposal Problem ment Pathological and Problem gambling are serious problems affecting the vast population in the world. Research by Reith in collaboration with the Scottish centre for social research (2006) shows that gambling is a behaviour that is out of control and one that disrupts personal, family, financial and employment relations in the contemporary society. In Britain, approximately 300, 000 people, 1% of the citizen population, are problem gamblers. Additionally, any person within a radius of 10 km from a Casino is at the risk of developing a gambling habit (Wong et al., 2000). Since the problem is growing rapidly, it has attracted a lot of attention among many researchers, seeking to identify the causes and effects of gambling habits in various regions of the world. The government in the UK has asserted that the issue of gambling is a matter of urgency that must be solved collaboratively if the society if to survive the problems that emanates from this behaviour. The reason why this problem has escalated today in the society is because the predisposing conditions are not yet identified and the effects of the behaviour have been undermined by the society at large. Through research, it is possible to identify the causes and the effects of the gambling behaviour which can help the government and other bodies in their struggle to curb the spread of this behaviour in the society today. Research Questions Purpose of Research This research aims to provide answers to the following questions; What are the causes of the wide spread of gambling behaviour in the society today and what factors predispose the people to this behaviour? What are the effects of both Pathological and problem gambling to the society and the nation at large? What effective measures can be put in place to create a gambling-free society? Purpose of the Research The main purpose of this research is to investigate the various causes and effect of both pathological and problem gambling in the society today. The issue of the gambling has been a centre of focus for many researchers that today who seek to provide a research-based solution to the social disaster that has overwhelmed the society. By using a quantitative approach to measure the economic and social impact of the society today, it is possible to evaluate the extent to which this problem has suppressed economic and social growth in the society. This research therefore will provide viable recommendations that are actionable and that can be used to eliminate the factors that predispose the social community to the gambling behaviour as one way of protecting the community welfare (Nichols et al., 2004). The recommendation provided by this research can be used by the UK government and other centres of community development to develop strategies to plan a war against the problem of gambling in the society today. On this note, the research forms an effective Launchpad for the war against on the greatest problems facing the world today. Literature Review In the contemporary society, gambling is a behaviour that has become uncontrollable and its effects are becoming severe in the community. As a result, this issue has attracted a lot of research from many scholars who seek to identify the nature of the problem, the factors underlying the development of the behaviour and the socio-economic impacts of the behaviour on the contemporary society. The government in many countries in the world is funding many research bodies as part of its commitment to develop a strategy to combat the problem. A literature review of previous research will provide the research gap that exists in the vast research that has been conducted in the recent past. A wide range of research has been conducted regarding the various perspectives of the problem in the society. Reith with ScotGen (2006) recognized that gambling has both social and economic impacts in the society today. However, his research focussed mainly on the social impact of problem gambling in the society. This research identified that males under the age of 35 years, the economically disadvantage and youths in colleges are at higher risk of engaging in gambling. Recent research by community research partners (2010) showed that drug abuses, alcoholism, poverty and peer influence and increase in the number of Casinos in the urban areas are the causes of the gambling behaviour. Most researchers have come into a concession that there is a direct linkage between gambling and community problems (Sproston et al., 2000). Grant et al. (2002) showed that gambling results to economic crisis in families, drug addiction, conflict within family members and poverty in the community. In the academic environment, youths with gambling habits drop from their education and suffer from alcohol and drug addiction(Breslin et al., 2000). The California Research Bureau (2012) set out to investigate the reason why many people are stuck into the habit of gambling. The finding of this research showed that the gambling is psychosocial problem that is affected by the psychological desires of the mind (Rogers and Webley, 2001). By creating a link between the medical needs and the gambling behaviour, the California centre of research suggests that a psychological approach is important if the problem of gambling is to be overcomed in the society today. However, it is clear that previous research has isolated the issues of problem gambling and pathological gambling (Castellani, 2000). Particularly, vast research has focused on problem gambling forgetting that cases of pathological gambling are also increasing. Statistics indicate that the number of pathological gamblers is almost equal to the number of problem gamblers. On this note, it is clear that both issues are crucial to the society if a comprehensive approach is to be used to tackle this problem. This research provides a comprehensive approach by handling both pathological and problem gambling problems in an endeavour to provide a solution that works for both in the society. On this note, this research fills a wide research gap and will provide a good ground for concerned parties to solve the problem of gambling in society. Research Methodology For the purpose of this research, a quantitative approach will be used. One purpose of this research is to measure the causes of gambling within the UK society. Geographically, this research will be focus on London from which the target and sample population will be identified. The research will focus on youths aged between the age of 18 years and 35 years. Then issues of poverty, drug abuse, peer influence and age will be evaluated and the way they predispose the population to gambling. Be evaluating a population of 50 respondents, it will be possible to measure the proportion of this population that supports each factor as a cause of gambling behaviour in the society. Secondly, the research will focus on the various impacts of the gambling in the community. To evaluate the economic impacts of the gambling on the society, the research will collect quantitative data regarding the society expenditure on gambling behaviour. The research will be based on annual expenditure of the society in gambling. This will provide a good ground to measure the average expenditure on gambling and to observe the trend in the period between 2010 and 2013. To measure the social impacts of the gambling to the community, the research will focus on the information available online regarding family disputes, alcoholism behaviour and other social problems that are related to gambling. This information will provide a quantitative measure of the social impact of gambling in the society. Other factors that will be measured include the number of Casino available in London and their accessibility to the public. Conceptual frameworks link the accessibility of Casinos with the overwhelming growth of this habit in the society (Derevensky, 2011). On this note, this research will identify the annual increase of the Casino facilities in the public between the year 2010 and 2013. This will form a good ground to compare the availability of Casino and the increasing trends of gambling in London. Secondly, the research aims at measure the growth of technology and its impact on Gambling behaviour. The technology will be measured in terms of the availability of computer simulated games within the Casino club. By identifying the technological changes in the last three years, it will be possible to make a connection between Casino technology growth and the increasing gambling behaviour in this society. The research is expected to take a time scope of three months after which the findings along with the conclusion and recommendations will be presented. The preparation for the research is expected to take a period of two weeks during which materials necessary for the research will be assembled. Researcher will gather data, record, and validate it. The process of data analysis is expected to take a period of one month. The last week of this month will be used for deducing conclusion and designing recommendation from the findings of the research. Data Collection Methods Since this research is quantitative in nature, it will focus on statistical data only. Statistical data is superior due to the fact that it is factual and provides a good ground to make viable recommendations, unlike qualitative data that is subjective and prone to individual opinions. For the purpose of this research, two methods of data collection will be employed; abstraction methods and questionnaires. Abstraction methods will aim at obtaining data from relevant bodies that provide current statistics regarding gambling behaviours. Some of the organizations that will be targeted will be institutions of higher learning, government and international bodies that provide information regarding society problems and gambling statistics. At least ten organizations will be identified for this research. Only those organizations with important data will be considered as relevant for the research. Any organization that will have no data concerning gambling will be declared unusable and will dropped and replaced with another one (Hennink et al., 2011). This method will pay attention to data that has been collected between the year 2010 and 2013. The researcher will prepare a sheet that will indicate the various informations desired from the websites to make the process easier to avoid collecting data from outside the scope of the research. Prior to the research, the researcher will check on the authenticity of the information obtained from these organizations to ensure that the data is accurate and utilizable. The abstraction method will be preferable since it is quick, cheap and efficient in obtaining statistical data. Secondly, information will be collected from the public by suing questionnaires. Questionnaires are useful tools for collecting information from the public without having to meet with them physically (Hennink et al., 2011). Unlike interviews that require a face to face or on phone communication, questionnaires can be administered through email, postal letters, which are easier methods of communication. The design of the questionnaires will be take a procedural approach to ensure that data collected in actionable. First, the researcher will present the most relevant questions. Preferably, the questions will be close-ended to ensure that the information obtained is statistical. Open ended questions suffer from the inferiority of garnering information that is subjective to respondent’s opinions. Next, a pilot study will be conducted to validate the questions and to ensure that the information collected satisfies the need of the research. Then, the researcher will present the questionnaires to a review board to ensure that questionnaire expert validate the questions and provide any corrective actions. To ensure high response to the questionnaires, the researcher will pay visits to the target institutions to inform them on the purpose of the study and to request their participation. This will ensure that they are willing to participate and to collaborate with the research. The questionnaires will be administered through e-mail and follow up calls will be made to ensure that the respondent receive the questionnaires. ` For the purpose of this research, the target population include the London public. The sample population will be identified through strategic sampling approaches to ensure uniform distribution of the sample population. London will be divided into 50 strategic segments one participant will be identified from each. Major participants include Casino hotels and learning institution depending on the availability of each. One manager will be selected to respond to represent each company, and to respond to the questionnaires provided. The respondent will be given a period of 2 weeks to respond to the questions and email them to the researcher. Data Analysis Since the research will focus on statistical data, the research analysis procedure will be used to process the data. For the purpose of this research, the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software version 18.0 will be used to process data. The software provides a simplified and flexible method for data analysis on windows 7 platform. Since most of the members use the windows version of the operation system, the software will be ideal for use (Carver and Nash, 2011). The data procession will begin after the data is validated both internally and externally to ensure that it is fit for the research. The data will be considered valid if there will be return of over 70%. Since there is a great challenge of collecting data related to social misbehaviour, this return of 70% will be considered valid for this research. Often, most people feel hard to provide information that regards their institutions due to fear of damaging organizational reputation. The data will be analysed on per yearly basis to ensure that it is possible to compare the year trend of gambling between 2010 and 2013. To analyse the causes of gambling in the society, the independent factors will include poverty, drug addiction, psychological attitudes, and peer pressure. At this stage, it will be important to compute the average number of people that have entered in gambling behaviour per year due to each of the factors. The percentage contribution of each independent factor will be computed to assess the relationship between gambling behaviour and each factor. To measure the economic impact of gambling on the community, the software will be used to compute the annual spending in gambling and the average spending per year. This data will assist in comparing the economic spending per year and to provide the trend in London (Walker and Barnett, 2003: Walker, 2003). To measure the social impact of gambling in the society, the researcher will compute the number of yearly family conflicts, engagement in drugs, school dropout rate and youths involvement. The will form a good ground to draw the relationship between the year increase in gambling and its effects on social behaviour in the society. Appropriate graphs and charts will be generated to support to provide a more comparative approach of analysing the data. An effective analysis of the data will allow the research to provide actionable recommendations that can work not only for London but also for the entire world. Bibliography Reith, G., and ScotCen, 2005, Research on the Social impact of Gambling. The Scottish Centre of Social Research. Breslin, F., Et al., 2000, The Effects Of Alcohol, Gender, And Sensation Seeking On The Gambling Choices Of Social Drinkers. Psychology Of Addictive Behaviours 13:243–252, 1999. California Research Bureau, 2012, Why Do People Gamble Too Much. California State Library. Carver, R. H., & Nash, J. G. 2011, Doing data analysis with SPSS version 18.0. Boston, MA: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning Castellani, B. 2000, Pathological gambling: The making of a medical problem. Albany: State University of New York Press Community Research Partners, 2010, The Social Impact of Casinos: Literature Review and Cost Estimates. Available at: < http://www.communityresearchpartners.org /uploads/publications/Casino%20Social%20Effect%201-21-10.pdf> Derevensky, J., et al., 2011, Youth gambling: The hidden addiction. Berlin: De Gruyter. Grant, J., et al., 2002. Pathological Gambling and Alcohol Use Disorder. Alcohol Research and Health, 26 (2), Pp, 143 -150. Hennink, M. M., Hutter, I., & Bailey, A. 2011, Qualitative research methods. London: SAGE. Nichols, M; Stitt, G and Giacopassi, D 2004, ‘Changes in suicide and divorce in New casino jurisdictions’ Journal of Gambling Studies 20(4): 391-404 Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, 2013, A Conceptual Framework of Harmful Gambling. Ontario Problem Gaming Research Centre. Rogers, P. & Webley, P. 2001, ‘It could be us! Cognitive and social psychological factors in UK National Lottery play’. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 50 (1), 181-199. Sproston, K., et al., 2000, Gambling Behavior in Britain. National Centre for Social Research. Walker, D. 2003, Methodological issues in the social cost of gambling studies’ Journal of Gambling Studies 15(3): 149-184 Walker, D and Barnett, A. 2003, ‘The social costs of gambling: an economic perspective. Journal of Gambling Studies 15 (3): 181-212 Wong, P., McAustan, P. and Bray, B. 2000, Survey of Problem Gambling in the Metropolitan Detroit Area. United Way Community Services Read More