Treating Problem Gamblers: Working towards Empirically Supported Treatment

There is an urgent need for mental health professionals to develop effective treatments for pathological gambling. A scientific meeting was held in Quebec City in June 2002 where 13 specialists in the treatment of gamblers pursued the objectives of making the State of the art statement concerning the procedures and the methodology to be used in future treatment outcome studies. This paper introduces this special issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies and identifies some of the key issues that confront clinicians and researchers interested in evidence based treatment for gambling related disorders.     

Meeting communication needs: topics of talk in the nursing home

Nursing home residents primarily rely on staff for communication and interpersonal relationships. Challenged by staffing shortages and increasingly complex care, staff who provide the most communication with residents lack awareness and skills to effectively communicate with older adults. This study, a secondary analysis of staff-resident interactions from one nursing home, explores communication topics and the effects of an intervention. Staff from one unit were recorded during 2 hours of caregiving to provide a representative sample of their communication with residents. Staff then attended an educational program targeting improved awareness of communication needs and reducing "elderspeak". Recording was repeated post-intervention. Baseline conversations focused on activities of daily living (ADLs), personal-social, technical care, and health assessment. Post-intervention ADL talk decreased in staff-resident interactions, while personal-social topics increased. These findings suggest that residents' limited opportunities for communication with staff are primarily focused on care tasks. With increased communication awareness, staff can learn to modify conversational topics to better meet older adults' psychosocial needs.     

A profile of gaming machine players in clubs in Sydney,Australia

New South Wales, Australia, is one of the major markets in the world for machine gaming, with its 1,441 registered clubs holding the dominant share of the state's machines. This study examined machine gambling behavior amongst a random sample of 3,000 club members from six of the largest clubs in Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales. The findings identify their machine gambling preferences and participation levels, isolate significant sociodemographic and other differences between gaming machine and non-gaming machine players, measure the prevalence of probable pathological gambling associated with machine gambling, and identify certain characteristics which differ significantly between probable pathological and non-pathological machine gamblers amongst the respondents.     

Awareness of Gambling-Related Problems, Policies and Educational Programs Among High School and College Administrators

This brief report summarizes a survey of high school and college representatives and their awareness toward gambling-related problems. The Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling developed a survey instrument to review the policies and training programs of 20 high schools and 10 colleges that were located within the catchment areas of Massachusetts Department of Public Health state-sponsored gambling treatment programs. The results revealed that there is an important discrepancy between the prevalence of gambling-related problems among young people and the awareness of these problems among educators. High school and colleges evidence a paucity of existing gambling-related regulations or policies. There is little opportunity for students and educators to learn within the school setting about gambling and its potential hazards. Without sufficient in-service education and training for faculty and staff, there is little likelihood that this group of educators can engage in the early identification or prevention efforts that are so vital to advancing the health and welfare of young people.     

Extensions of the Duncan's Multiple Range Test for unbalanced data

Extensions of the Duncan's Multiple Range Test to group means with unequal numbers of replications are proposed. These extensions and the extensions due to Kramer (1956) and Bancroft (1968) are evaluated with the Least Significant Difference and the Scheffe (1959) test for observed Type 1 error and correct decision rates by computer simulation techniques. The performance of these procedures to varying degrees of sample-size imbalance and variance heterogeneity under normal and skewed distributions is also examined.     

Training issues in churches

The national and local frameworks of the Christian churches in the UK provide important resources to families and to young people and children. To promote awareness and effective responses to child abuse, training needs to address organizational issues and individual learning, and should do so at community, regional and national level. In training within churches, the part played by beliefs and values cannot be overlooked. Key concerns are identified and discussed.     

Registration completeness and international comparisons of infant mortality

The physical development of the live born infant is the single most important variable governing its survival: infant mortality among those weighing 2,500 grams (5 1/2 pounds) or less at birth is 17 times the mortality among those weighing more than 2,500 grams at birth. The variation in mortality according to birth weight (or gestation) is greater than for subclasses of color, sex, maternal age, or birth order. Infant mortality in the United States is significantly higher than in a number of other countries e.g., Sweden, Netherlands, Norway. The difference is thought, by some, to be due to underregistration of low birth weight infants in other countries. In this paper, distributions of live births by birth weight for Denmark, England and Wales, New Zealand, and the United States, and infant mortality data for Denmark and the United States are examined. The data do not support a hypothesis of gross underregistration of live born infants in other countries. The results indicate that some index of physical development (birth weight, gestation, or a combination of both) should be included in any appraisal of infant mortality.     

Reference-Other Support and Ethnic Attitudes as Predictors of Intergroup Behavior*

A number of general propositions are proposed concerning the manner in which reference-others and ethnic attitudes influence intergroup behavior. In a laboratory setting, it is shown that the influence of individual reference-others upon behavior is partially determined by certain structural properties of these others which are labeled importance, visibility, centrality, legitimacy, and control. Among other findings, it is also shown that the relative influence of the two predictor variables depends upon the type of activity considered. An explanation for these results is framed in terms of the reference-other properties mentioned above.