Gambling harms measure key to shifting unhealthy habits

Challenge

Counting the cost

For more than two decades, researchers have measured gambling habits across the Australian community. 

The figures show Australia is the world’s global capital for per-capita gambling losses, with $1,527 lost per adult in 2022-23 – the highest figure since 2001.

Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory (EGRL) researchers set out to fill gaps in the data – and capture the health and wellbeing impacts of those losses. 

Funded by the former Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation in 2022, the research established new measures of gambling-related harm, both for people who gamble, and those affected by someone else’s gambling.

This groundbreaking work ensures policymakers can get a more holistic picture of how gambling prevalence impacts different groups across the population. 

Solution

Building blocks for change

CQU Professor Matthew Browne led the research, and said the GHS helped broaden what had been a narrow understanding of gambling harms. 

“For decades, industry would point to a fairly consistent figure from research that ‘just’ 1 per cent of the population were facing high-risk, severe gambling harm on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI),” Prof Browne said.

“The PGSI measure didn’t account for a whole range negative health and wellbeing impacts, or the fact that gambling by one individual can have flow-on effects to many others.

“The support sector also told us the language of ‘problem gambling’, and its suggestion that the person who gambles is the problem, is stigmatising.”

The preceding 10-item, yes/no scored Short Gambling Harms Screen (SGHS), also developed by researchers at CQU, helped reflect broader negative impacts focused on the individual who gambled. 

This single scale needed an update to reflect a potentially greater range of harms, and to recognise that gambling harm can occur to people other than the gambler. 

The EGRL’s work created new measures across long and short scales: the GHS-10 and GHS-20. 

They also developed separate versions for ‘affected others’, or people affected by someone else’s gambling): the GHS-10-AO and GHS-20-AO.

Researchers developed the methods by measuring the health and wellbeing of people who reported gambling-related harm and comparing them to a similar group, matched on risk factors, who did not experience gambling-related harm. 

The study statistically controlled for other elements that might affect health like alcohol use or disability. 

“Using these tools, we hope all prevalence studies can measure the total burden of gambling-related harm in the population, including harm to self, harm to affected others, and harm to children – to enable appropriately informed policy responses,” he said.

Impact

Both New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory included the GHS-10 and GHS-10-AO in their 2024 Gambling Surveys, conducted by CQU’s EGRL.

The population survey of approximately 10,000 adults in NSW found that 53.5 per cent had gambled in the past year, while 21.0 per cent of NSW adults reported harm from their own gambling, another person’s gambling, or the continuing effects of earlier gambling.

EGRL also surveyed approximately 10,000 ACT adults in 2024. The study found that 53.2 per cent had gambled in the past year, while 15.8 per cent of ACT adults reported at least one form of self, affected-other or legacy gambling harm. 

Across both surveys, pokies were identified as the largest contributor to population-level harm from people’s own gambling, with wagering products such as sports and race betting also among the major contributors.

New Zealand’s national Gambling Harm Intervention Data Standard, issued in 2025, also includes the GHS-10-AO score among the data collected for gambling-harm intervention services. 

In 2026, an EGRL study using an adapted version of the GHS-10 assessed the harms associated with direct gambling marketing for Australians who were regular sports bettors. 

Published in journal Addiction, the study found people with gambling accounts who opted out of receiving messages from wagering operators made fewer bets, reduced their amount spent, and reduced short-term gambling harms.

Head of EGRL Professor Matthew Rockloff said the GHS continue to attract international interest. 

“We’ve seen a very clear growth in research and requests for proposals and tenders that cite our work on harms and ask for more insights,” he said.

“The interest reflects a real need for internally consistent, robust and well-validated index of gambling-related harm.

“Most importantly, it broadens the way gambling harm is understood, moving beyond a narrow focus on clinical disorders to recognise its wider effects on individuals, families and communities.”