British Gambling Commission publishes new roadmaps outlining research priorities
The roadmaps are an update to the regulator’s Evidence Gaps and Priorities reporting.
UK.- The British Gambling Commission has outlined its priorities for research under the new system funded by the statutory gambling levy introduced in April. It has refined its themes for research under six ‘roadmaps’.
The regulator said it had received feedback that the existing six themes were very wide in scope. The new roadmaps retain the same themes but go into more detail on some of the identified evidence gaps while also seeking to provide greater transparency of the body’s regulatory evidence needs following claims that gambling research could see conflicts of interest.
The roadmaps were produced after a survey and a series of workshops that included sessions with researchers and academics, policymakers, people with lived experience of gambling harms and the gambling industry itself. The views expressed were considered against the Commission’s Corporate Strategy and licensing objectives to develop an expansive set of priorities.
The six evidence themes are:
- early gambling experiences and gateway products
- the range and variability of gambling experiences
- gambling-related harms and vulnerability
- the impact of operator practices
- product characteristics and risk
- illegal gambling and crime.
Each theme now contains evidence roadmaps which have been designed to guide the direction of future research to inform regulation, give greater visibility of priorities and progress and highlight areas where the wider evidence ecosystem can contribute and add value.
“We have been clear about gaps that the Commission is already planning to address – which may include the use of funding available as a result of the statutory levy – but we are also highlighting evidence gaps where other organisations may be best placed to take action,” the Gambling Commission said. “We will continue to revisit and refresh our evidence gaps and roadmaps as we react to progress and emerging findings from our own research and the wider gambling research ecosystem”.
Alongside UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as the main commissioner of research under the new system, the Gambling Commission will also be in receipt of levy funds to commission new regulatory research. It says this will allow it to accelerate progress in many areas in line with the new roadmaps. Levy funding also brings an opportunity to conduct longer programmes of work, potentially including a longitudinal study, it said.
The regulator added: “By working closely with UKRI and others, we hope to see an array of new research and data projects emerge that align to these priorities and contribute to making progress against the roadmaps. We also hope that being clear about our priorities will enable academics and researchers to obtain funding from other sources and, where appropriate, we will consider issuing letters of support for research that addresses a roadmap area”.
The regulator has already begun trialling a Research Reporting Form that stakeholders, academics and researchers can use to inform the regulator about research and how it addresses the roadmaps and research priorities. It intends to revisit the roadmaps towards the end of next year to provide an update on known progress.
The Gambling Commission stressed that there is a collective need for a better understanding of the impact of interventions and programmes aiming to prevent or reduce harm across all the themes and issues identified. It said there were challenges, including in the complexity of the interventions that require evaluation and the contexts in which they occur.
“There is also a need to be proportionate, and to consider how to be pragmatic and realistic (both in terms of resource and time) in delivering good evaluations,” it said. “However, an increase in the use of evaluative approaches to tackle some of the gaps we have identified will be pivotal in developing a richer and more informative evidence base”.
