Cel de-al XXV-lea Congres SNPCAR

Vă invităm să participați la Cel de-al XXV-lea Congres SNPCAR şi a 47-a Conferinţă Naţională de Neurologie, Psihiatrie și Profesiuni Asociate Copii şi Adolescenți din România .

24-27 septembrie 2025 – Brașov Hotel Kronwell

Pentru a vă înscrie la congres, vă rugăm să apăsați aici.

Vă așteptăm cu drag!

Asist. Univ. Dr. Cojocaru Adriana – Președinte SNPCAR


VALIDATION OF THE ROMANIAN VERSION OF SOUTH OAKS GAMBLING SCALE REVISITED FOR ADOLESCENTS (SOGS-RA)

Autor: Izabela Ramona Lupu Adrian Nicolae Opre Viorel Lupu
Distribuie pe:

Gambling became a subject of interest not only for the young players but for researchers also. As any disorder has a normative of criteria for being diagnosed there must be some psychological testing sustained by validated instruments. The most frequently used instrument for screening problem and pathological gambling in children and adolescents is SOGS-RA (South Oaks Gambling Scale Revisited for Adolescents) – (Winters, Stinchfield and Fulkerson, 1993). In order to have a valid instrument for measuring problem and pathological gambling in Romania we followed the steps for the validation of SOGS-RA: translation, retroversion, reliability and validity, comparing the norms (Hambleton, 1994; Hambleton and Patsula, 1998; Geisinger, 1994). After collecting data we analysed them – factor extraction and analysis – we obtained four factors: gambling consequences, game financing, emotional regulation, and saving appearances. The scale has a very good internal consistency (alpha Cronbach between .88 and .86). The concurrent validity (throughout correlation with DSM-IV TR diagnostic) is very good (Pearson correlation r=0.87, p<0.01) and show a significant relation between SOGS-RA scores and DSM-IV TR criteria.

Introduction:

Problem and pathological gambling has to be addressed more frequently because as the recent prevalence studies show there is a growingly phenomenon (Lupu and Todirita, 2013). Therefor some researchers – Derevensky and Gupta (2006), Dickson and Derevensky (2006), Dickson, Derevensky and Gupta (2008), Magoon, Gupta and Derevensky (2007) – are concerned with children and adolescents gambling. South Oaks Gambling Screen – SOGS – (Lesieur and Blume, 1987) is a well known instrument which measures problem gambling in adults and it is largely applied. Winters, Stinchfield and Fulkerson (1993) derived SOGS-RA from SOGS for offering a more accurate measurement tool in the case of problem and pathological gambling in children and adolescents.
In this respect the SOGS-RA resulted has 16 items (4 of them being omitted from interpretation) and has only one factor as literature shows (Winters, Stinchfield and Fulkerson, 1993). This scale assesses gambling behaviour in the last 12 months. Items from SOGS were contextually and linguistically adapted for childhood and adolescence. The new instrument focuses on the frequency of gambling and on other behaviours that accompany gambling while SOGS focuses on the matter of money. In their studies Winters, Stinchfield and Fulkerson (1993) reported a good reliability (.80) and validity of the scale. Wiebe, Cox and Mehmel (2000) indicate that a total of 4 or more positive
answers are an indicator of problem gambling.
For the validation of the Romanian version of SOGS-RA Romania we followed the standard steps for the validation: translation, retroversion, reliability and validity, comparing norms (Hambleton, 1994; Hambleton and Patsula, 1998; Geisinger, 1994).
The newly DSM V made some changes in the diagnostic criteria. Criteria for gambling in DSM-IV TR include 10 symptoms and in DSM V only 9, excluding a criteria that supposes the financing of gambling throughout thefts. These criteria were used to analyse the criterion validity of SOGS-RA in the Romanian version.

Material and Methods:

Participants
Respondents in this study (N=197) were recruited from different Romanian schools and were aged 11 to 19 years. 63.95 of them were male and the mean age for the total group was 15.51 years. Mean age for male was 15.93 years with a standard deviation of 2.33 and for female 14.76 with a standard deviation of 2.24. Participants belonged to classes from sixth grade to thirteenth grade.
The participants came from all the main regions of Romania: North-West, North-East, South-West, South, Centre and Bucharest. 98.5% of the sample approached participated at the study.
In this study we had two groups of children and adolescents: one without problems with gambling from schools and high-schools and one with diagnostic of pathological gambling according to a psychiatrist and based on the criteria of DSM-IV TR.

Procedure
We first obtained a written consent from the scale’s principal author, Ken Winters, Ph.D. Professor, at the Department of Psychiatry at University of Minnesota Medical School. Then parents signed an informed consent for expressing the agreement regarding their children participating in the study. Children and adolescents were given 30 minutes to answer all the questions and they were previously explained that there is no god or wrong answer. In order to prevent any bias of the data they were asked to be as sincere as possible. They were reassured that the questionnaires were anonymous.
The process of validation of SOGS-RA according to norms proposed by Hambleton, 1994; Hambleton and Patsula, 1998; Geisinger, 1994 followed the steps:

1. Translation and retroversion of the scale
a. Translation into Romanian of the scale
b. Retroversion of the scale
c. Evaluation of discrepancies between the original version and that obtained after retroversion

2. Reliability analysis compared with the original version

3. Norms for general population

4. Validity analysis compared with the original version

5. Norms compared with those reported by other studies

Instruments

The validated instrument, SOGS-RA: South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised Adolescent scale (Winters, Stinchfield, and Fulkerson, 1993), establishes the gambling severity. Based on the adult version of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), the content of the SOGS-RA was adapted to be more suitable for young people. Items like those addressing borrowing money were less emphasized in the English SOGS-RA version. From the fifth item there were “yes-no” answers. The first four items dealt with types of games played ever or during the last year, the amount of money gambled and issues of whether parents gambled and if they gambled a lot. The other twelve items referred to chasing losses, lack of control, causes of excessive playing, emotional impact of gambling, and ways of financing gambling, consequences of this behaviour. All the items were related to the diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV TR. These items can be considered as related to DSM V too as only the last item refers to the criteria excluded from DSM V – illegal financing of gambling (borrowing or stealing money for continuing the game or for paying the debts).
This scale is the most frequently used to measure gambling behaviours in adolescents (Gupta and Derevensky 1998) and reported in prevalence studies (Lupu and Todirita, 2013). The sum of these twelve items was the total SOGS-RA score which served as the criterion for assessing the severity of gambling (Winters, Stinchfield, and Fulkerson, 1993). In this version the reliability of the SOGS-RA in terms of alpha coefficient was reported to be 0.8 (Winters, Stinchfield, and Fulkerson, 1993). Alpha Cronbach for original English version of SOGS-RA was 0.81 for male and 0.76 for female (Poulin, 2002), and for the Lithuanian version 0.75 (Skokauskas et al, 2009).
Untitled Document

Results and Discussion:

We first analysed the internal consistency of the scale. For establishing the internal consistency of SOGS-RA we calculated the alpha Cronbach coefficient. Table I shows results of internal consistency of the Romanian version of SOG-RA.

Table I. Alpha Cronbach for SOGS-RA.

From these results – 0.88 for male and 0.86 – we can conclude that the scale is reliable. The alpha Cronbach coefficient is dependent on the number of items the scale is made of and in this case the alpha Cronbach is very high.
Test-retest correlation indicates to what extent a participant can obtain similar results in different measurements in time. We tested a group of 140 persons and after a three month period we tested the same persons and then we calculated a correlation coefficient between these two administrations. The more the time passed between applications the lower the correlation was. This phenomenon is not only because the instruments is not stable in time but also because the behaviour can suffer changes in time.
The results are shown in Table II and they are between .77 and .98.

Table II. Correlation between different applications

In order to establish the validity we first considered the criterion validity. We can obtain criteria validity calculating the concurrent validity. We correlated the results obtained by the participants at DSM-IV TR with the results obtained at SOGS-RA, DSM-IV TR being the only valid instrument which refers to the same pathology in Romanian.
We had two groups of children and adolescents: one without problems with gambling from schools and high-schools and one with diagnostic of pathological gambling according to a psychiatrist and based on the criteria of DSM-IV TR.
Correlation between the diagnostic according to DSM-IV TR as a criterion variable and scores obtained at SOGS-RA is r=.87, p<0.01. A strong correlation like this between the two instruments indicating a good concurrent validity, a significant relation between scores at SOGS-RA and the independent criterion (DSM-IV TR).
The predictive validity was investigated using the simple regression analysis. The unstandardized regression coefficient was .87 and R2=0.76 which means that 76% of the SOGS-RA scores’ variation is due to being in one category of diagnostic based on DSM-IV TR.
In order to verify if there are significant differences between the two categories – gamblers and non-gamblers – we used ANOVA. The scores’ variances were significantly different (F 1,195=622.037, p=0.000) which means the scores obtained at SOGS-RA by the non-gamblers were different from the scores obtained by the gamblers.
For the Romanian version of SOGS-RA we analysed the scale’s capacity to discriminate based on a criterion (the psychiatric diagnostic based on DSM-IV TR) between subjects with problem gambling, subjects at risk for developing problem gambling and subjects with no gambling or social gambling. We used Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) which can reveal the discriminative value of the SOGS-RA scale.
Area Under Curve (AUC) between .50 and .70 shows a minor accuracy according to the standard criteria, between .70 and .90 there is a mild accuracy and over .90 there is a strong accuracy. This accuracy refers to the capacity of the scale to classify subjects according to relevant clinical categories (Pintea and Moldovan, 2009).

Table III. SOGS-RA’s discrimination accuracy between gamblers and non-gamblers

Construct validity

Factor analysis is frequently used for establishing a scale’s construct validity. Table IV presents the matrix of the extracted components of SOGS-RA’s items.

Table IV. Matrix of the extracted components of SOGS-RA’s items.

There are four factors according to the matrix above. The quantitative analysis was accompanied by the qualitative analysis of each item and after these two perspectives we made a decision.
The first factor includes items referring to the excessive game’s consequences with impact on the subject’s social life. Factor 1 is named social consequences and includes items 13, 7, 15 and 9. The second factor includes items 10, 8, 12 and 11 and refers to emotions and the incapacity to self-regulate emotions – emotional regulation. The third factor refers to game financing and includes items 14 and 16. The last factor – saving appearances – includesitems 5 and 6. Wiebe, Cox and Mehmel (2000) considered that the scale has two factors – the control over the game and the game’s consequences. Boudreau and Poulin (2007) consider only one factor motivating that 11 items have very good internal consistency – more than .94.
We reorganized the sample and included children of 11 years and adolescents of 18 and 19 years because the Romanian educational system include these ages in the classes targeted by the original scale (Winters, Stinchfield and Fulkerson, 1993). One more argument to extend the sample of subjects is given by studies which show that children start gambling.
For establishing the score one has to add one point for each positive answer. The scale contains 16 items and the first 4 refer to types of game played, the maximum amount of money gambled and the parents’ gambling behaviour. For the final score one had to consider only item from 5 to 16. The fifth item is considered positive if one of the following answers “each time” or “most of the time”. The maximum score is 12 and it ranges from 0 to 12. The results obtained can be considered according to the Table below (Tab. V).

Table V

Conclusions and comments:

We followed the standard steps for the validation of SOGS-RA: translation, retroversion, reliability and validity, comparing norms (Hambleton, 1994; Hambleton and Patsula, 1998; Geisinger, 1994). After collecting date we analysed them – factor extraction and analysis – we obtained four factors: gambling consequences, game financing, emotional regulation, and saving appearances.
The scale has a very good internal consistency (alpha Cronbach between .88 and .86). The concurrent validity (throughout correlation with DSM-IV TR diagnostic) is very good (Pearson correlation r=0.87, p<0.01) and show a significant relation between SOGS-RA scores and DSM-IV TR criteria.
The predictive validity was investigated using the simple linear regression and the results indicate that 76% from the SOGS-RA score variance can be explained by the variance of diagnostic criteria according to DSM-IV TR. The SOGS-RA score makes possible the establishing of the level of gambling according to norms.
Some limitations have to be mentioned and refer to the asymmetric structure of the sample. Even though the number of the subjects respect the condition related to the number of items the scale is made of the next sample has to consider the equilibrium between genders.
Some future perspectives occur – a new validation study taking into account the above limitations and some correlation data between SOGS-RA and another measuring instrument for the same behaviour.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Jeffrey Derevensky, Department of Educational Psychology and Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Quebec, Canada and Lynette Gilbeau, Research Coordinator at the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviors for their support.

REFERENCES

  1. Boudreau B, Poulin C. The South Oaks Gambling Screen – revised Adolescent (SOGS-RA) revisited: a cut-point analysis. Journal of Gambling Studies, 2007, 23(2):299-308.
  2. Derevensky JL, Gupta R. Measuring gambling problems amongst adolescents: Current status and future directions. International Gambling Studies, 2006, 6(2): 201-215.
  3. Dickson L, Derevensky J. Preventing adolescent problem gambling: Implications for school psychology. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 2006, 21(1-2): 59-72.
  4. Dickson L, Derevensky J, Gupta R. Youth gambling problems: An examination of risk and protective factors. International Gambling Studies, 2008, 8(1): 25-47.
  5. Geisinger KF. Cross-cultural Normative Assessment: Translation and Adaptation Issues Influencing the Normative Interpretation of Assessment Instruments. Psychological Assessment, 1994, 6:304-312.
  6. Gupta R, Derevensky J. An empirical examination of Jacobs General Theory of Addiction: Do adolescent gamblers fit the theory?, Journal of Gambling Studies, 1998, 14(1): 17-49.
  7. Hambleton RK. Guidelines for adapting educational and psychological tests: A progress report. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 1994, 10: 229-244.
  8. Hambleton RK, Patsula L. Adapting tests for use in multiple languages and cultures. Social Indicators Research, 1998, 45: 153-171.
  9. Lesieur HR, Blume SB. The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS): a new instrument for the identification of pathological gamblers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1987, 144(9): 1184-8.
  10. Lupu V, Todiriţă IR. Updates of the Prevalence of Gambling in Romanian Teenagers, Journal of Gambling Studies, 2013, 29 (1): 29-36; DOI: 10.1007/s10899-012-9296-y.
  11. Magoon M, Gupta R şi Derevensky J. Gambling among youth in detention centers, Journal for Juvenile Justice and Detention Services, 2007, 21, 17-30.
  12. Pintea S, Moldovan R. The receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis: Fundamentals and applications in clinical psychology. Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapies, 2009, 9(1): 49-66.
  13. Poulin C. An assessment of the validity and reliability of the SOGS-RA. Journal of Gambling Studies, 2002, 18(1): 67-93.
  14. Skokauskas N, Burba E, Freedman D. An Assessment of the Psychometric Properties of Lithuanian Versions of DSM-IV-MR-J and SOGS-RA. Journal of Gambling Studies, 2009, 25: 263–271; DOI 10.1007/s10899-009-9121-4
  15. Wiebe JM, Cox BJ, Mehmel BG. The South Oaks Gambling Screen Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA): Further psychometric findings from a community sample. Journal of Gambling Studies, 2000, 16: 275-288.
  16. Winters KC, StinchfieldR.D, Fulkerson J. Toward the development of an adolescent problem severity scale. Journal of Gambling Studies, 1993, 9: 63-84.