Assignment: The prevalence of gambling

and problem gambling among Australian

married couples
You and your team are asked to analyse the prevalence of gambling and problem gambling in
Australia. In this context, gambling means individuals engage in any of the following activities:
buying instant scratch tickets or lotteries, playing poker machines or games such as Bingo or Keno,
going to casinos, betting privately on horses/dog races, or sports, etc. Problem gambling means either
gambling excessively and/or with negative consequences. You will get a dataset containing a sample
of 1501 Australian couples aged between 18 and 75 in 2015 (see Table 1 for the definitions of the
variables). This assignment includes two parts: the individual part and the group part.

Table 1. Definitions of variables

Variable name Definition
state 1=NSW&ACT; 2=VIC&TAS; 3=QLD; 4=SA; and, 5=WA&NT
h age/w age Age of the husband/wife
hindigenous /w indigenous Whether the husband/wife is an Indigenous Australian:
1=indigenous, 0=not
h education/w education Highest education received: 1= tertiary education; 2= vocational
education; 3=Year 12 graduates; and 4= less than Year 12
h gamble /wgamble 1=engaged in some form of gambling during the last 12 months;
0=not
tamt Combined monthly spending on gambling by the couple ($)
h prbgam /w prbgam 1=problem gambler; 0= not
h amtgamble/w amtgamble Spouse’s monthly spending on gambling ($)
Variables start with h¿ are for the husbands, and those start with w ¿are for the wives

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Part 1: Problem-solving (Individual contribution, 20% toward the total
mark)
You are required to work through the following questions in Part 1 as your preparation for
Part 2 of the Group Assignment – Group presentation. See the Unit Outline and Canvas site
for details on the Group assignment.

Rounding rules:

 All intermediate steps – round to 4 decimal places.

 Final answers – round to 2 decimal places. (i.e. 12.34%, 5.67, 8.90, 11.00)

Questions:

1. How many/What percentage of Australian adults engaged in gambling in 2015?

2. Prevalence of gambling among Australian couples and the relationship between the spouses’
gambling behaviour (you can find the tips for manipulating data at the end of this document).
 What is the percentage of couples in which the husbands engaged in gambling?
 What is the percentage of couples in which the wives engaged in gambling?
 What is the percentage of couples in which both spouses engaged in gambling?
 What is the percentage of couples in which at least one spouse engaged in gambling in
2015?

3. Problem gambling: What percentage of gamblers are problem gamblers?

 The husbands
 The wives
 The households (the proportion of couples with at least one spouse gambled)

4. The patterns of gambling prevalence by age and education.

 Group the individuals into 5-year age groups, for example, <=25, 26-30, 31-35… . Create
a table and a chart to show the number of gamblers in each age group.
 Group the individuals into groups based on their education level, for example. Create a
table and a chart to show the number of gamblers in each education level group.

5. Spending on gambling
 Summarise the household spending on gambling by the gambling households (where at
least one spouse gambles) using descriptive measures including the mean, the median,
the standard deviation, and the quartiles. Draw a histogram of gambling spending by the
gamblers.
 Calculate the average household spending on gambling by gamblers in each state.

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  Calculate the average household spending on gambling by the non-problem gamblers
(none of the spouses is a problem gambler but with positive spending on gambling)
and problem gamblers (at least one spouse is a problem gambler).
 Relationship of gambling spending between the gambling spouses (the households
where both spouses spent more than 0 on gambling):
Create two new variables by taking ln (the natural log) of h amtgamble and w amtgamble ,
respectively (for example, =ln (hamtgamble )). Note that anyone whose spending is zero will
get a missing value for the two new variables. Calculate the correlation coefficient of
these two new variables (excluding anyone whose spending is 0), i.e., the logarithm of the
spending on gambling of the gambling couples. Draw a scatter plot of the two new
variables.

Part 2: Group presentation (Group assignment - 20% toward the total

mark)
Your group is required to analyse and interpret the results from all the questions in Part 1.
The presentation must be based on the findings in Part 1. If your group like to do additional
research, it is acceptable and encouraged, but it should be an addition to the presentation.

You need to address the following questions/issues in your group presentation.

Based on the results of Question 1,

 Is the percentage of Australian adults who engaged in gambling in 2015 high compared to
some other countries?
 Do Indigenous Australians gamble more often than non-Indigenous Australians?
 Are your sample statistics comparable with the findings from those in the literature? If not,
cite the main reasons (hint: you should pay attention to who is in your sample).

Based on the results of Question 2 and Question 3,

 Who were more likely to gamble, the husbands or the wives?

 Are the wives of the gambling husbands more or less likely to gamble? Are the husbands
of the gambling wives more or less likely to gamble?
 Who were more likely to be problem gamblers, the husbands or the wives?
 Are the wives of the husbands who are problem gamblers more or less likely to be
problem gamblers? Are the husbands of the wives who are problem gamblers more or less
likely to be problem gamblers?

Based on the results of Question 4,

 Describe and comment on the age pattern of gambling.

 Describe and comment on the pattern of gambling by education.

Based on the results of Question 5,

 Which measure of centre and variability will be the best to use for the household
spending on gambling by the gambling households? Why?

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  Comment on the histogram of gambling spending by the gamblers.
 Comment on the average household spending on gambling by gamblers in different
states.
 What can you conclude based on the comparison of the average household spending on
gambling by the non-problem gamblers and problem gamblers?
 Comment on the relationship of gambling spending between the gambling spouses.

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Tips for manipulating the data to do the individual assignment:

The data set provided to you is in the unit of couples. You may need to create a sample of individuals
for your individual assignment.

An example:

If this were the original data, in which a record is of a couple:

You can cut the values of the husbands and paste them to the end of the data in the corresponding
column of the same variable for the wives (or vice versa). The columns for the wives will then contain
the values of both couples. For the variable state, you can copy and paste it in the same way to the
same state column. Note it is important you need to do this in one go without any other operation.