Validity Study of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) among distinct groups of Brazilian gamblers

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira,Maria Paula MT
• Data de Publicação: 2002
• Outros Autores: Silva,Maria Teresa Araujo, Silveira,Dartiu Xavier da
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry (São Paulo. 1999. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-44462002000400005
• topic: Pathological gambling; Screening; Scales; Validity

OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study was to assess the internal consistency and to perform a factor analysis of the Brazilian version of the SOGS - South Oaks Gambling Screen - scale, as well as its ability to discriminate between different profiles of gamblers. METHOD: Two hundred and seventeen subjects were enrolled in the study: 46 gamblers under treatment at the Gamblers Treatment Unit of PROAD - Program for Orientation and Attention of Dependent Persons- of the Federal University of São Paulo; 96 social gamblers and 75 subjects screened as pathological gamblers recruited at the local Jockey Club, video poker and bingo clubs. RESULTS: Differences in the score means of all three groups were statistically significant and were able to discriminate between social gamblers, pathological gamblers interviewed in a gambling site and the clinical sample. The internal consistency of the 20-item scale measured by Cronbach's alpha was 0.9304. Factor analysis resulted in a three-dimensional solution accounting for 58,6% of the total variance: a first factor composed mainly by questions related to the consequences of gambling; a second factor encompassing questions related to the gambling behavior of pathological gamblers; and a third and less expressive factor involving only two questions, probably a hybrid one of difficult interpretation. CONCLUSIONS: The Brazilian version of the SOGS was a useful screen to discriminate Brazilian pathological gamblers from social gamblers as well as to differentiate clinical pathological from non-clinical pathological gamblers, and to identify different levels of severity.