Pathological gambling (PG) is a serious public health concern that is attracting increased funding for the delivery of services. There is a crucial need for a brief, clinically meaningful and psychometrically sound scale that can be used in routine clinical practice to assess the effectiveness of treatment in PG's. It is the aim of this project to develop such a measure. In Phase I of the project we will develop a pool of preliminary items for the Rhode Island Gambling Outcomes Rating Scale (RIGORS). Three focus groups, the first comprised of ten PG's, the second of treatment professionals, and the 3rd an international panel of experts on PG, will suggest content domains and items for the preliminary version of the scale. We will then examine the psychometric properties of the scale by administering the RIGORS to a sample of PG's seeking, or already in treatment. The results from Phase-I will enable us to fund a more rigorous Phase-Il multi-site treatment outcome validation study.
The proposed application is as a brief, clinically meaningful scale that can be used and easily scored and interpretted by clinicians. The scale will be marketed as a multidimensional outcome measure of PG.
