Gambling in Greenlandic adolescents

Abstract

Gambling has never been investigated in Greenlandic adolescents. High prevalence of gambling problems and a relation to other addictive behaviours has been found in adult Greenlanders. Greenlandic adolescents are daily exposed to gambling, for example, by selling lottery tickets, through advertises and electronic devices. The aim of this study is to investigate how Greenlandic adolescents perceive gambling, and to pilot test the Lie/Bet screening-instrument.Ten semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted for 31 adolescents, aged 12–16, from 3 schools in Nuuk, Greenland.The 31 adolescents have experiences with gambling. Whether they define a game as gambling depends on: 1) Whether the game is about playing with or about money, 2) whether the game is about earning items, 3) the gain/loss, 4) who they lose money to, and 5) the purpose. If the purpose is to have fun, it is not necessarily seen as gambling. None mentioned bingo as gambling, arguing that bingo is about having fun. Two recent trends were found to have reached Greenland: The close link between sports and gambling, and skin-betting. Additionally, the Lie/Bet screen was, with slight modifications, found to be useful as a screening-instrument among Greenlandic adolescents and it is proposed to be used in future studies.

Keywords

• gambling
• greenland
• indigenous populations
• qualitative research
• screening