School ethos and adolescent gambling: a multilevel study of upper secondary schools in Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract

Background: Gambling is not uncommon among adolescents, and a non-trivial minority has serious problems with gambling. Therefore, enhanced knowledge about factors that may prevent against problematic gambling among youth is needed. Prior research has shown that a strong school ethos, which can be defined as a set of attitudes and values pervading at a school, is associated with a lower inclination among students to engage in various risk behaviours. Knowledge about the link between school ethos and adolescent gambling is however scarce. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between teacher-rated school ethos and student-reported gambling and risk gambling, when controlling also for sociodemographic characteristics at the student-and the school-level. Methods: Data from two separate cross-sectional surveys were combined. The Stockholm School Survey (SSS) was performed among 5123 students (aged 17-18 years) in 46 upper secondary schools, and the Stockholm Teacher Survey (STS) was carried out among 1061 teachers in the same schools. School ethos was measured by an index based on teachers' ratings of 12 items in the STS. Adolescent gambling and risk gambling were based on a set of single items in the SSS. Sociodemographic characteristics at the student-level were measured by student-reported information from the SSS. Information on sociodemographic characteristics at the school-level was retrieved from administrative registers. The statistical method was multilevel regression analysis. Two-level binary logistic regression models were performed. Results: The analyses showed that higher teacher ratings of the school's ethos were associated with a lower likelihood of gambling and risk gambling among students, when adjusting also for student-and school-level sociodemographic characteristics. Conclusions: This study showed that school ethos was inversely associated with students' inclination to engage in gambling and in risk gambling. In more general terms, the study provides evidence that schools' values and norms as reflected by the teachers' ratings of their school's ethos have the potential to counteract unwanted behaviours among the students.

Teacher-Rated School Leadership and Adolescent Gambling: A Study of Upper Secondary Schools in Stockholm, Sweden

“…The findings corroborate and extend prior research which has shown that features of school effectiveness are associated with fewer health risk behaviours among the students [16,23,24]. The current study also extends the results of a prior publication based on the same data which showed that a school's level of teacher-rated ethos was inversely associated with student gambling and risk gambling [29], and thus indicates that features of school effectiveness at different levels of the school organisation may be relevant for students' inclination to engage in health risk behaviours.…”

“…While the ambition of the current study has not been to explore the mechanisms at work between school leadership and student gambling and risk gambling, some plausible pathways can be derived on the basis of previous research. It is for instance reasonable to assume [21] that a strong school leadership may be reflected in a school's ethos, i.e., the attitudes, values and behaviours that characterise the social interaction among teachers and students and that are central in order to prevent the emergence of undesirable behaviours [22] including gambling and risk gambling [29]. Teachers' attitude to their students is a central component of the ethos concept [37].…”

“…Participants who marked "at least one" on any of the three items were classified as having engaged in risk gambling. The items have been used in prior studies to measure risk gambling [29,32,33].…”

“…Additionally, the intra class correlation (ICC) is reported, which in multilevel binary logistic regression provides an approximation of the amount of variation that can be attributed to the higher level. The same analytical approach has been applied in previous studies based on the same data [22,25,26,29].…”

“…However, such an approach could potentially point to conditions in school that could be targeted to lower the risk for gambling problems, an approach that has been called for [3]. One exception is a study that was based on the same data as the current one, which showed that a school's degree of teacher-rated ethos was inversely associated with gambling and with risk gambling among their students [29].…”