The Prevalence and Correlates of Youth Susceptibility to Gambling among a Sample of Australian Secondary School Students.

Susceptibility is a demonstrated predictor of young people’s experimentation with and future use of substances including tobacco, alcohol, and e-cigarettes. However, susceptibility has not previously been explored in relation to youth gambling. This cross-sectional study explored the prevalence and characteristics associated with susceptibility to gambling among a large sample of Australian secondary school students who had never previously gambled. Students from two states answered gambling questions as part of the 2017 Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) Survey. Students self-reported whether they had ever previously gambled and completed a susceptibility to gambling measure based on the Susceptibility Index for adolescent smoking. Factors associated with gambling susceptibility were assessed using an ordinal logistic mixed model. Among the sample of 4,397 students who had never previously gambled, more than half were categorised as either susceptible (43%) or highly susceptible (17%) to gambling, with the remaining students classed as committed never-gamblers (40%). Students who were male, older, living in a regional/rural area, had more money to spend on themselves, rated their school performance as below average, and knew more people that had gambled in the last 30 days, were significantly more likely to have a higher susceptibility to gambling than their counterparts. This study is the first to apply the concept of susceptibility to the field of youth gambling. Findings support the potential value of a susceptibility tool for identifying young people who are more likely to experiment with gambling and may be at increased risk of developing future gambling-related problems.