Gambling Careers
Reith ESRC-funded five-year longitudinal qualitative study followed 50 ‘problem’ and recreational gamblers and showed that gambling behaviour unfolds as fluid “careers”-people move in and out of heavy, harmful, and light/no involvement over time, shaped by social networks, environments, money/work, life events and identity work. This reframed gambling away from static “addict/not-addict” categories toward more dynamic concepts such as, trajectories and turning points.
The “gambling careers” lens has become a widely used framework for longitudinal and life-course analyses, policy-relevant prevention, and intervention design-centring movement, context, and social structure rather than static diagnoses. It has been applied in a range of international studies (including in Denmark and Malawi) and used to understand gambling in the context of the criminal justice system.
A further innovation of the study was to examine the importance of social networks for gambling careers, and to use sociograms, such as the one below, to explore the imapcts of gambling across social networks.
Publications
Reith, G and Dobbie, F (2013) Gambling careers: a longitudinal, qualitative study of gambling behaviour. Addiction Research and Theory, 21(5), pp. 376-390. (doi: 10.3109/16066359.2012.731116)
Reith, G. and Dobbie, F. (2012) Lost in the game: narratives of addiction and identity in recovery from problem gambling. Addiction Research and Theory, 20(6), pp. 511-521. (doi: 10.3109/16066359.2012.672599)
Reith, G. and Dobbie, F. (2011) Beginning gambling: the role of social networks and environment. Addiction Research and Theory, 19(6), pp. 483-493. (doi: 10.3109/16066359.2011.558955)
Reith, G and Dobbie, F (2013) The Socio-Temporal Dynamics of Gambling: Narratives of Change over Time. In R. Cassidy, C. Loussourn and A. Pisac (eds) Qualitative Research in Gambling: Exploring the Production and Consumption of Risk. London: Routledge
Dobbie, F Reith, G and .McConville, S (2017) ‘Utilising social network research in the qualitative exploration of gamblers' social relationships’. Qualitative Research 22, 4, 86-98