| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 健康政策與管理研究所 === 100 === Introduction: With a widespread expansion of gambling activities, emerging evidence suggests that college students are at an even higher risk for negative health consequences. However, relatively little is known about whether gambling activities, as opposed to other well-known health risk behaviors, have significantly different effects on various domains of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among college students.
Methods: Data from 909 college students were collected via a self-administered anonymous survey, which included a DSM-IV-based gambling screen (score: 0-10); the WHOQOL-BREF, an abbreviated version of the World Health Organization QOL assessment (WHOQOL-100); and questions regarding health risk behaviors. Gamblers were classified into 3 groups: 1) non-problem gamblers (score=0); 2) sub-clinical gamblers (score=1-3); and 3) problem gamblers (score≥4). After adjusting for sociodemographic/background variables and other health risk behaviors, multivariate linear regression was used to analyze whether gambling problems had significantly different effects on various domains of HRQOL among college students.
Results: Multivariate analysis found that with regard to physical health HRQOL (value: 4-20), both problem gamblers (β=-1.706, p=0.005) and sub-clinical gamblers (β=-0.377, p=0.037) reported significantly poorer HRQOL than non-problem gamblers. Additionally, sub-clinical gamblers reported significantly poorer HRQOL in the social relationships domain (β=-0.439, p=0.02) than non-problem gamblers. There is no significant difference between non-gamblers and non-problem gamblers.
Discussion and Conclusions: In addition to the well-known health risk behaviors, more attention should be paid to the significantly adverse effects of gambling problems on different domains of HRQOL among college students. Future research could explore the possible mechanisms of how gambling problems affect different domains of HRQOL. Also, in the notion of “Healthy gambling,” efforts should be made to prevent gambling behaviors turning into gambling problems.
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