Characteristics of gambling and problematic gambling in the Norwegian context: a DSM-IV-based telephone interview study.

The gaming business has increased considerably during the past years, and there are also some indications that the prevalence of pathological gambling has also increased. As it is important to know the problem size and character, an epidemiological study was performed in a representative sample of the Norwegian population (N = 2014; response rate 47.8%). The proportion that never gambled was 31.2%, and a majority (47.2%) gambled sometimes, while 21.0% gambled often. Men (25.5%) gambled more often than women (17.7%). Lotto was the most popular game with 76.0%, followed by football tip (10.8%), slot machines (5.1%), and lotteries (4.9%). For some types of plays, there was a discrepancy between rank for playing, and for problematic playing. Slot machines gave higher problematic playing rank. The mean prevalence of problematic gambling (pathological gambling plus at-risk gambling) was 0.60%, with higher prevalence for those younger and for men. Men 18-30 had a very high prevalence (2.83), compared to men over 30 (0.28%) and females 18-30 (0.84) and over 30 (0.12%). The total problematic gambling frequency was 1.97% for 18-30 years, and 0.1% over 30. There are no problematic gamblers over 50 in the material. The DSM-IV with its only 10 questions gives a conservative estimate of pathological gambling. There were significant correlations between degree of gambling and some established risk factors. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.