Gambling behavior of ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese college students in the United States

ABSTRACT

This study examined gambling activity and risk for gambling problems among ethnic Chinese- and Vietnamese- American college students. The Canadian Adolescent Gambling Inventory (CAGI) was administered to a stratified sample of 653 undergraduates at a public university in the northeastern United States. This sample included racial-ethnic subsamples large enough to compare gambling behavior among Chinese, Vietnamese, Other Asian, Black, Latino, and white students. Logistic regression analysis indicated that the odds of having gambled in the past three months were lower than whites only for Other Asians [odd’s ratio(OR) = .320, p < .05] and Latinos [OR = .477, p < .05] and not for Chinese, Vietnamese, or Blacks. Among students who gambled in the last three months, the odds of meeting criteria for high severity risk of problem gambling were higher for the Chinese [OR = 5.381, p < .05], Latinos [OR = 6.520, p < .05], and Blacks [OR = 6.540, p < .05] than for whites. The odds of meeting criteria for some degree of risk were higher for Vietnamese than white students [OR = 2.736, p < .05]. These findings suggest the need for future study of underlying risk factors for students of minority racial-ethnicity.

KEYWORDS:

• Gambling behavior
• problem gambling
• college students
• race-ethnicity
• United States

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Anthony Roman, who gave valuable advice on the statistical analysis. Jessica LeBlanc assisted with the online survey. Paul Watanabe gave helpful suggestions. Nathan Smith read early drafts of the manuscript and gave constructive comments. Randy Stinchfield offered suggestions on administration the Canadian Adolescent Gambling Inventory in an online survey format. John Her provided research assistance. All errors are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by a small grant from the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling.

Notes on contributors

Carolyn Wong

Carolyn Wong, Ph.D., Research Associate at the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, studies community engagement of immigrants in health communication and public policy.

Hsin-Ching Wu

Hsin-Ching Wu is a doctoral candidate in Public Policy at the McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusetts Boston. She studies cultural policy and risk of gambling problems among immigrants.