Clinical trial NCT03124589: Comparing the Efficacy of an Online Gambling Intervention to a no Intervention Control Condition
Official title: Comparing the Efficacy of an Online Gambling Intervention to a no Intervention Control Condition: Randomized Controlled Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Gambling Problem
Lead sponsor: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2017-04-24
Enrollment: 321
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: Online interventions for gambling problems hold a strong potential to help people with gambling concerns. However, there are no trials, to-date, that have been able to demonstrate the effectiveness of such an intervention. The current trial will compare participants provided access to an online gambling intervention to those assigned by chance to a no intervention condition in order to test the efficacy of one such Internet intervention for gambling.

Participants will be recruited through Amazon's MTurk crowdsourcing platform. Potential participants identified as problem gamblers who are interested in quitting or reducing their gambling in the next 6 months, or often think about it, based on an initial survey will be invited to complete additional surveys at 6 weeks and 6 months. Those who then agree to be followed up will be randomized to access an online intervention for gambling or a no-intervention website. These participants will then be contacted again at 6 weeks and 6 months to ask about their gambling, and their impressions of the online intervention. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that participants receiving access to the online gambling intervention will report a greater reduction in number of days gambling and in NODS scores at 6-month follow-up than participants in the no intervention control condition.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* 18 years of age or over
* A score of 5 or over on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI)
* Thinking about cutting down or quitting their gambling (in next 6 months, or state that they are thinking about it most or almost all of the time)
* Willingness to complete a 6-week and 6-month follow-up survey

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in the variable, National Opinion Research Center DSM Screen for Gambling Problems (NODS) score
timeFrame: Past 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Change in the variable, number of days gambling in the past month
timeFrame: 6 weeks and 6 months
measure: Change in the variable, Gambling Symptom Assessment Scale (GSAS) score
timeFrame: 6 weeks and 6 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Toronto
country: Canada
facility: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
state: Ontario
Study officials:
affiliation: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
name: John A Cunningham, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Schell C, Godinho A, Cunningham JA. Examining Change in Self-Reported Gambling Measures Over Time as Related to Socially Desirable Responding Bias. J Gambl Stud. 2021 Sep;37(3):1043-1054. doi: 10.1007/s10899-020-09970-1.
citation: Cunningham JA, Godinho A, Hodgins DC. Pilot randomized controlled trial of an online intervention for problem gamblers. Addict Behav Rep. 2019 Mar 6;9:100175. doi: 10.1016/j.abrep.2019.100175. eCollection 2019 Jun.