A systematic mapping of nordic gambling research 2000–2015: current status and suggested future directions

Abstract

There has been an increased research focus on gambling in the Nordic countries since the turn of the century. This paper provides a first systematic mapping of Nordic gambling research published between 2000 and 2015. Eleven international, ten Nordic bibliographic e-databases, and Google Scholar were systematically searched, with 382 records fulfilling the study inclusion criteria. Of the records identified in the international and Nordic databases, most had a first author from a Finnish institution (n = 70), followed by Norway (n = 57), Sweden (n = 55), Denmark (n = 45) and Iceland (n = 5). The majority of the studies represented prevalence research (38.8%), focusing on gambling behavior or problem gambling and various explanatory factors, while limited focus has been on prevention, treatment and service-focused research. Methodologically, the majority of the identified studies (39.7%) analyzed population samples/cohorts or other cross-sectional samples, with many of the studies also applying review approaches or presenting cases such as the regulatory system in a country (28.3%). The scientific disciplines most frequently represented were social and public health sciences. The findings highlight research areas that have received less focus – e.g. only one example of a longitudinal project looking into factors associated with a problem gambling development, and the need for increased resources channeled into the translation of available evidence into coordinated prevention- (e.g. problem gambling prevention in school-settings) and service-focused (e.g. through randomized, controlled treatment trials) research initiatives. The findings should be considered in the coordination of future Nordic research.

Keywords:

• Gambling
• Nordic countries
• Scandinavian and Nordic Countries
• research field
• systematic review
• problem gambling

Geolocation information

The study covers the Nordic countries, i.e. Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Pia Pörtfors at The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) for invaluable assistance in the work with the international bibliographical database searches.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. This work was supported by The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies (personal research stipend, JN).

Notes

1 https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fjcr.incites.thomsonreuters.com

2 https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/publishers.html#policies

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies.