Analysis of Public Discourse on Gambling Help Forums
Using innovative data methods, Arcadia Social Research uncovered insights into gambling harm and recovery, providing valuable evidence for prevention strategies and peer support in South Australia.
Context
The South Australian Government invited applications for funding as part of their 2021-2026 investment plan for minimising gambling harm in South Australia. Arcadia Social Research was awarded funding for an experimental methodology to leverage publicly available data from people with lived experience of gambling harm, to better understand the protective factors in preventing and recovering from gambling harm, as well as the risk factors leading to relapse and the way people transition from recreational to harmful gambling.
Approach
Arcadia exported public data from Reddit based on the key objectives of the study and constructed a comprehensive codeframe to quantitatively code the data according to prognosis factors (e.g. in relapse or recovery), protective factors, risk factors and triggers in transitioning to harmful gambling behaviours. This allowed for nuanced sentiment to be captured, which is typically missed in AI-assisted methodologies.
The study also evaluated the usefulness of a novel methodology called numerically aided phenomenology (NAP), where the coded themes were further subjected to a cluster analysis, in which each narrative (i.e. post) was assigned to one of a small number of groups of narratives based on overall similarity on the coded themes.
Result
The resulting report provided insight for the South Australian Government and practitioners in gambling support regarding the use of Reddit for people who have gambled harmfully, including two-way peer support. The incidence of certain protective and risk factors among forum members, as well as the distinctive combinations of factors that characterised each NAP cluster communicated in the findings. The benefits and limitations of the methodology were also outlined for future learnings.
Arcadia was also invited to present the findings of this study at the 2024 Community of Practice for the gambling support sector, facilitated by the Office for Problem Gambling.
Social & Policy Area
Methods
Data mining
Thematic analysis
Advanced analytics
Note
This project was completed when operating as 3arc Social.