Teacher-rated school leadership and adolescent gambling: a study of schools in Stockholm, Sweden

Background So-called “effective schools” are characterised by features such as a strong and purposeful school leadership and a favourable school ethos. A prior study showed that a school's degree of teacher-rated ethos was inversely associated with student gambling and risk gambling. Building on these findings, the current study aims to examine the associations that teachers' ratings of the school leadership share with gambling and risk gambling among students in the second grade of upper secondary school in Stockholm (ages 17-18 years). Methods Data were drawn from two separate surveys performed in 2016: the Stockholm School Survey (SSS) and the Stockholm Teacher Survey (STS), with information collected amongst 5,191 students and 1,061 teachers in 46 upper secondary schools. Gambling and risk gambling was measured by student self-reports in the STS. School leadership was assessed by teachers' responses to ten items in the STS, which were added to an index and aggregated to the school level. School-level information from administrative registers was also linked to the data. The statistical method was two-level binary logistic regression analysis. Results Teachers' average ratings of the school leadership were inversely associated with both gambling (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.93-0.998, p = 0.039) and risk gambling (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.89-0.99, p = 0.031) among upper secondary students, whilst adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics at the student and the school level. Conclusions The findings lend further support to the assumption that characteristics of effective schools at different levels of the school organisation may reduce students' inclination to engage in health risk behaviours. Key messages Teachers’ ratings of the school leadership were inversely associated with student gambling and risk gambling, whilst adjusting for student- and school-level sociodemographic characteristics. The findings indicate that a strong school leadership, being one key feature of effective schools, may reduce students’ inclination to engage in health risk behaviours.

Validating the GMQ-F in a Canadian Sample of University Students

This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Gambling Motivation Questionnaire for Financial Motivations (GMQ-F) in a Canadian sample of emerging adult university students. Confirmatory factor analysis was first used to test a 16-item GMQ-F for model fit, and then multiple regression analysis was used to test the predictive utility of the four subscales/factors. Results confirmed that the GMQ-F is a valid and reliable measure of university student gambling motivations, in accordance with the four-factor structure proposed by Dechant (2014) despite poor initial results. Regression results were mixed: Three of the four subscales (enhancement, social, and coping) were significant predictors of problem gambling and gambling variety, only the enhancement and coping subscales were significant predictors of gambling frequency, and none of the subscales significantly predicted average monthly expenditure on gambling. The implications of this study support further refinement of the GMQ-F, as differing results from the current study and from prior work on normative samples point to a different reliance on motivational categories or different motivational categories entirely.RésuméCette étude évalue les propriétés psychométriques de l’échelle de motivations financières relatives aux jeux de hasard et d’argent (GMQ-F) auprès d’un échantillon canadien d’étudiants universitaires jeunes adultes. La première analyse factorielle confirmatoire (AFC) a été utilisée pour tester l’ajustement du modèle du GMQ-F à 16 éléments, puis une régression multiple a été utilisée pour tester l’utilité prédictive des quatre sous-échelles/facteurs. Les résultats ont confirmé que le GMQ-F est une mesure valide et fiable des motivations au jeu des étudiants universitaires, suivant la structure à quatre facteurs proposée par Dechant (2014), malgré de faibles résultats initiaux. Les résultats de la régression étaient mitigés : trois des quatre sous-échelles (amélioration, aspect social et adaptation) étaient des prédicteurs significatifs du jeu problématique et de la variété de jeu; tandis que seules l’amélioration et l’adaptation étaient des prédicteurs significatifs de la fréquence du jeu. Aucune des sous-échelles n’a prédit de manière significative les dépenses mensuelles moyennes consacrées aux jeux de hasard. Ce projet a pour effet d’encourager une amélioration du GMQ-F, car la différence des résultats entre l’étude actuelle et des travaux antérieurs sur des échantillons normatifs indique une dépendance différente à l’égard des catégories de motivation, voire différentes catégories de motivation entièrement.