ECU awarded $1.65 million to continue researching gambling behavior, risk

East Carolina University’s Gambling Research Policy Initiative (GRPI) has received an extension of a half-million-dollar grant that ended in August of this year. The new $1.65 million funding from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) will support GRPI’s next three years of research.

Gambling Research and Policy Initiative graduate research assistant, Cassidy Morrison, received the honorable mention award for her poster presentation at the International Center for Responsible Gaming conference in Las Vegas. (Contributed photos)

The GRPI is an interdisciplinary research initiative that focuses on gambling awareness, behavior, risk and gambling-related harms. Its team of researchers conducts state, national and international studies to acquire a clearer picture of gambling behavior and the pathways to gambling disorder across a broad population, including understudied and high-risk groups.

“This funding allows us to exist,” said Dr. Michelle Malkin, assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology and director of the GRPI. “It pays for most of the salaries for our key staff, as well as undergraduate and graduate research assistants and a post-doctoral researcher.”

The GRPI’s new postdoctoral research scholar, Dr. Sadia Khan, recently joined the GRPI from her homeland of Pakistan, where she worked as a clinical psychologist and expert on behavioral addictions. Gambling is currently illegal in Pakistan, and Khan is excited to be able to learn more about gambling and how it is related to her work with substance use and addiction.

Over the next three years, Malkin and the GRPI will lead a variety of new projects funded by the grant. The research will include emerging forms of gambling, like cryptocurrency, and each project will focus on an area and population of people where little research currently exists. For instance, one project will examine the gambling behaviors of military groups, while another will focus on gambling in socioeconomic communities in North Carolina.

“We know from prior research that people with low socioeconomic status may not gamble in the same ways,” Malkin said. She said these individuals may seek out more affordable options, like the lottery, and they may have different motivations and behaviors.

“They may be buying that $1 lottery ticket to change their lives,” she said.

One of the projects Malkin is excited about is EAGLES, a five-year longitudinal study of emerging adults, who are defined as 18 to 24-year-olds.

“This will be one of the most important studies that we do,” she said. “Emerging adults are the biggest group of people experiencing gambling-related harms, and at the same time, we do not know what exactly that looks like. Are people calling helplines early in their experiences? Are they waiting until they already have a gambling disorder? What are they gambling on aside from sports?”

ECU’s Gambling Research and Policy Initiative research team, including Cassidy Morrison, Dr. Michele Stacey, Dr. Michelle L. Malkin, Dr. Sadia Khan and Jay Blackwelder, attended the International Center for Responsible Gaming in Las Vegas.

Currently, Malkin said there isn’t a lot of research on this age group. The first wave is currently being conducted, and the next five waves will continue under the new grant.

“Gambling itself is not bad. We are not trying to stop people from gambling,” Malkin said. “What we want to do is reduce the prevalence of gambling-related harms and the progression toward gambling disorder, which may lead to life-altering outcomes, such as the commission of a gambling-motivated crime and suicidal ideation.”

Recently, the GRPI research team, including Malkin, Khan, Dr. Michele Stacey, senior data analyst and associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, graduate research assistant Cassidy Morrison and undergraduate research assistant Jay Blackwelder, attended the International Center for Responsible Gaming’s Conference on Gambling and Addiction in Las Vegas, Nevada. They presented four GRPI-related research posters. Malkin presented a workshop and served on a research panel, and Morrison’s lightning talk and poster on voluntary self-exclusion received the honorable mention award.

Malkin is excited that the GRPI is helping train the next generation of gambling-focused researchers.

“I’m pretty proud of the GRPI,” she said. “It is something I never imagined happening in my entire career.”

Funds from the award will help the team continue to understand the changing landscape of gambling behavior and to present their findings throughout North Carolina, the country and beyond.

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