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At pretest, a sample from the Hull region was
thoroughly surveyed less than 1 month before the
opening of the Hull casino on March 23, 1996. A
parallel sample from the region of Quebec City
was also surveyed during the same period (12).
Posttest took place 12 months after pretest. The
duration of the interviews varied between 5 and
20 minutes. At pretest, the gambling activities
accessible in the 2 regions were the same, the
most common being video lottery terminals
(VLTs), provincially regulated lottery tickets,
and bingo. The residents of the Hull region
lived approximately 213 km (127.8 miles) from
the nearest casino, that of Montreal. Quebec
residents live 254 km (152.4 miles) from the
Montreal casino and 126 km (75.6 miles) from the
casino in Charlevoix.
Results
At posttest, Hull respondents gamble
significantly less often on lotteries than at
pretest and less often than Quebec respondents
at either pretest and posttest.
A region effect (F1,864 = 6.83, P < 0.01) and a
time effect (F1,864 = 11.85, P < 0.001) were
observed for bingo, and only a time effect was
observed for card games (F1,868 = 10.36, P <
0.01) and dice games (F1,871 = 6.38, P < 0.05).
During both pretest and posttest, Hull
respondents reported participating less
frequently in bingo than the Quebec respondents,
and with time, both regions report a significant
decrease in their frequency of participation in
this activity as well as card and dice games
(Table 1).
Amount of Money Lost Gambling. A repeated
measures ANOVA with covariates (age, education,
and income at pretest) performed on a log
transformation of the largest amount of money
ever lost in 1 day’s gambling revealed a
significant interaction effect (region × time)
(F1,799 = 34.61, P < 0.001). The adjusted means
of the log indicate that at posttest, Hull
respondents reported having lost a significantly
higher amount of money in 1day (mean 1.23, SE
0.03) than did Quebec respondents (mean 0.89, SE
0.03), and this amount is significantly more
than the amount of money lost at Hull (mean
0.92, SE 0.03) and Quebec (mean 0.89, SE 0.03)
pretest. The adjusted averages without log
transformations (in Can$) are as follows: Hull
pretest mean 89.14, SE 45.42; Quebec pretest
mean 33.10, SE 47.42; Hull posttest mean 154.61,
SE 69.97; Quebec posttest mean 21.84, SE 73.05.
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