This study addresses the urgent need for a brief screening test for problem gambling that can be used by clinicians in a range of health settings. The study entailed secondary analysis of data from several problem gambling treatment studies to determine if an existing short screen, developed on the basis of population studies, performs equally well in clinical settings.
Findings showed that endorsement rates of individual problem gambling screening items vary substantially by gender, age and ethnicity as well as severity of the disorder. The three‐item NODS‐CLiP performs very well across all four of the samples of treatment‐seeking problem and pathological gamblers. However, extremely high endorsement rates among two of the four samples prevented researchers from exploring the validity and reliability of the NODS or the NODS‐CLiP among these respondents.
In populations with extremely high rates of pathological gambling, it seems likely that only one or two items are needed to screen for the disorder. In populations with base rates that are high but not extreme, the three‐item NODS‐CLiP (in both its lifetime and past‐year formats) performs well. Additional analyses highlight the differential ability of the individual lifetime and past‐year NODS items to discriminate between more and less severe pathological and problem gamblers.
