Many electronic avenues for entertainment have a reputation for supposed addiction. The Internet, the Blackberry smartphone, video games, and Facebook are just a few. One entertainment electronic may be getting a reprieve, however. Electronic gaming machines, once thought to cause a gambling addiction, may only be a problem if a problem already exists.

A study published earlier this year by Nower and Blaszczynski examines whether electronic gaming machines have a causal relationship with gambling problems. The researchers looked at the playing motivations of using an electronic gaming machine and the perceptions of the money-limiting strategies employed in the devices to determine a relationship between problem gambling behavior and the machines.

The participants in the study were recruited as they entered the gaming area of one of four establishments in a metropolitan area in Australia. There were 127 participants used in the study.

The participants were asked to complete a battery of pen and paper questionnaires that assessed gambling preferences, such as the amount of time spent gambling, the number of times the participant gambled each month, their favorite mode of gambling, and the reason they had chosen to gamble using an electronic gaming machine.

The questionnaires also asked questions related to the participants’ perceptions of money-related harm reduction strategies and assessed the gambling severity of each participant. Gambling severity was determined using the Problem Gambling Severity Index of the Canadian Problem Gambling Index (Ferris & Wayne, 2001).

The participants were grouped into non-problem, low risk, moderate-risk and problem gamblers. The researchers used bivariate analyses to determine the relationships that existed between independent variables and gambling severity groups.

The results of the study show that problem gamblers were more likely that their non-problem gambling counterparts to report that they played electronic gaming machines to earn additional income and to escape daily problems.

Those in the problem gambling group were also more likely to report that they lost track of money spent during a session of play, and that they did not endorse using monetary limit-settings like smart cards.

The small sample size of this study and the use of a convenience sample may make the results limited in generalizing to other populations.

The findings of Nower and Blaszczynski highlight the importance of looking at the individual gambler, rather than the mode of gambling. It appears from the study that this particular mode of gambling may not be the cause of pathological behaviors.