In 2019, the Gambling Commission announced a National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms for Great Britain. Underlying the strategy is the Framework of Harms, outlined in Measuring gambling-related harms: A framework for action. "The Framework" adopts a public health approach to address gambling-related harm in Great Britain across multiple levels of measurement. This report examines existing research expertise relevant to the Framework among academics based in the UK during the 12-year period from 2008 to 2019. The aim is to understand the extent to which the Framework factors and subfactors have been studied to identify gaps in expertise and provide evidence for decision making that is relevant to gambling harms research priorities.
A social network analysis was conducted to identify coauthor networks and assess the alignment of research publications to the Framework. The findings show considerable variation by framework factor in the number of authors and collaborations, suggesting a need to develop additional research capacity to address under-researched areas. The Health factor subcategory of Mental Health comprised almost three-quarters of all citations, with the Resources factor subcategory of Money and Debt a distant second at 12% of all citations. The Relationships factor, comprised of two subfactors, accounted for less than 10% of total citations.
