Abstract
Media pressure from gambling advertising has reached worrying levels. It constitutes a risk to the mental health of young people and adolescents by promoting a favourable attitude towards gambling, a higher frequency of gambling and a perception of greater accessibility. Currently, there is no instrument available to assess the impact of gambling advertising. OBJECTIVE: The present study aims to adapt and validate the Impact of Gambling Advertising Scale (IGAS). DESIGN: The IGAS scale was translated from English ensuring its linguistic, conceptual and metric equivalence. The psychometric properties were then tested. SITE: Comunidad Valenciana (España). PARTICIPANTS: 1724 adolescents with a mean age of 16.52 years (SD=.759). INTERVENTION: Self-administered, paper-based questionnaire in a single measure. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Advertising impact, and gambling intention, severity and availability. RESULTS: Internal consistency and two-half reliability were good, Cronbach's α=.782 and α=.70, respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis concluded that the Spanish version replicates the original three-dimensional version. Convergent validity analyses showed direct and significant relationships with different aspects of gambling behaviour, and other predictors. CONCLUSION: The adapted version of the IGAS is a reliable and valid measure for the assessment of the impact of advertising on adolescents. The scale is a useful instrument for the diagnosis of risk level and the evaluation of preventive interventions.