A Prospective Study of Psychiatric Comorbidity and Recidivism Among Repeat DUI Offenders.

Psychiatric comorbidity has emerged as a key element distinguishing DUI offenders from others, and, in some cases, distinguishing repeat offenders from first-time offenders. This paper utilizes a prospective design to determine whether the comorbid disorders identified among repeat DUI offenders can predict recidivism. Seven hundred forty-three repeat DUI offenders were recruited from a two-week inpatient treatment program at which they received a standardized mental health assessment and followed across five years post-treatment to track DUI offense, motor vehicle-related offenses, and general criminal offenses. Psychiatric comorbidity, though it did not predict DUI recidivism specifically, predicted criminal re-offense more generally. In addition, there was a specific relationship between lifetime attention deficit disorder and repeated motor vehicle-related offenses. These findings suggest that for many repeat offenders, DUI is one outlet in a constellation of criminal behavior, and that psychiatric comorbidity increases vulnerability for criminal re-offense.

Thirty years of lottery public health research: methodological strategies and trends.

Cognitive measurement techniques, such as self-reports of behavior and reaction time measures, largely dominate the field of psychological research. It is uncommon for researchers to examine a phenomenon of interest by observing actual behavior within natural settings. To illustrate the existence of this methodological trend for gambling research, this article reviews systematically selected samples of the peer-reviewed literature related to lottery gambling in general and the literature related to pathological gambling and lottery more specifically. The results indicate that self-report surveys dominate the extant lottery literature, and experimental investigations of video lottery terminal gambling supplement those papers. This landscape encourages researchers to expand their methodological approaches to the study of lottery gambling. Currently, we know more about what research participants tell us they do with respect to lottery gambling than we do about their real-life lottery gambling behavior.

Persistence pays off: follow-up methods for difficult-to-track longitudinal samples.

OBJECTIVE: Evolving privacy and confidentiality regulations make achieving high completion rates in longitudinal studies challenging. Periodically reviewing the methods researchers use to retain participants throughout the follow-up period is important. We review the effectiveness of methods to maximize completion rates in a 1-year longitudinal study of repeat driving-under-the-influence (DUI) offenders. METHOD: During the course of 21 months, we attempted to follow-up with 704 participants of a licensed residential treatment facility for repeat DUI offenders. High rates of lifetime Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, substance-use disorders (97.6%) and nonsubstance- or nongambling-related psychiatric disorders (44.5%) among the sample made tracking participants difficult. To locate participants and complete follow-up interviews, we obtained baseline information, contacted collaterals, sent mailed reminders, searched Internet databases, and gave a monetary incentive for completing study interviews. RESULTS: We located 608 participants with active telephone numbers (87.4%) and completed interviews with 488 (70.1% of the entire eligible sample and 80.3% of those with active telephone numbers), after an average (SD) of 8.6 (9.1) calls (median = 5.0). Increasing the number of calls continued to yield additional completions at 10, 20, and 30 calls; at approximately 40 telephone calls, the potential return for additional calls did not justify the added effort. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that researchers need to (1) employ more than 10 telephone calls to adequately track difficult-to-follow substance-using populations, and (2) prepare for a subsample of participants who might require more extensive contact. These results highlight the importance of using empirical guidelines to plan estimates for the number of contacts needed to achieve an adequate follow-up completion rate.

Virtual harm reduction efforts for Internet gambling: effects of deposit limits on actual Internet sports gambling behavior.

BACKGROUND: In an attempt to reduce harm related to gambling problems, an Internet sports betting service provider, bwin Interactive Entertainment, AG (bwin), imposes limits on the amount of money that users can deposit into their online gambling accounts. We examined the effects of these limits on gambling behavior. METHODS: We compared (1) gambling behavior of those who exceeded deposit limits with those who did not, and (2) gambling behavior before and after exceeding deposit limits. We analyzed 2 years of the actual sports gambling behavior records of 47000 subscribers to bwin. RESULTS: Only 160 (0.3%) exceeded deposit limits at least once. Gamblers who exceeded deposit limits evidenced higher average number of bets per active betting day and higher average size of bets than gamblers who did not exceed deposit limits. Comparing the gambling behavior before and after exceeding deposit limits revealed slightly more unfavorable gambling behavior after exceeding deposit limits. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that Internet gamblers who exceed deposit limits constitute a group of bettors willing to take high risks; yet, surprisingly, they appear to do this rather successfully because their percentage of losses is lower than others in the sample. However, some of these gamblers exhibit some poor outcomes. Deposit limits might be necessary harm reduction measures to prevent the loss of extremely large amounts of money and cases of bankruptcy. We discuss how these limits might be modified based on our findings.