Measuring gambling knowledge in adolescents: The construction of a new short scale for research and practice

Several studies show that many adolescents gamble and a considerable proportion of them develop pathological gambling behavior. It has been shown that adolescents often have erroneous gambling knowledge, for example they are not aware of the technical definition of gambling activities or perceive gambling as a social and recreational activity. Nevertheless, nowadays there is a lack of measurement tools with adequate psychometric properties to assess gambling knowledge in adolescents. For this reason, the aim of the present study was to develop a new instrument able to evaluate this specific construct with a sample of Italian adolescents, the Gambling Related Knowledge Scale – For Adolescents (GRKS-A). In order to develop the scale and test its psychometric properties, 445 Italian adolescents participated in the study. The final version of the scale was composed of 8 items. Analyses confirmed the adequacy of the one-factor model and the reliability of this short scale. Support for the validity was also provided by obtaining significant and negative correlations with cognitive distortions, gambling economic perception, and gambling frequency. Moreover, the additional predictive power of GRKS-A on gambling frequency - with respect to the other variables - was demonstrated. Overall, findings support the suitability of the GRKS-A to measure gambling-related knowledge in research and practice involving adolescents.