Analysis ideas: gambling research gaps and questions
This page turns the catalogue into candidate secondary-analysis ideas. It is built around two core features: a Risk/Protective Factor Gap Matrix and a Research Question Generator. Together they identify studies that combine gambling measures with risk or protective factors, highlight under-studied domains, and suggest cross-study research questions that may be worth developing.
Risk/protective factor gap matrix
Rows are studies and columns are risk/protective factor domains. A filled cell means the study has gambling variables and at least one variable in that domain, making it a candidate for questions about risk, protection or gambling harm pathways.
Best studies for new analysis
These rankings prioritise studies with gambling measures plus the relevant risk, protective, harm or longitudinal structure. They cover the whole catalogue, so adult studies appear alongside youth studies; the age at which gambling is measured is shown against each.
Research Question Generator
Questions are generated where multiple studies share a named gambling measure or a gambling harm construct and also contain a relevant risk/protective domain. The Existing evidence column cross-references publications in our catalogue that already address each question, helping to identify genuine research gaps.
Missing but important ideas
These topics are conceptually important for gambling harm research, but may be weakly captured or inconsistently measured in the current catalogue. Where a topic is now covered for adults but not for children and young people, that asymmetry is itself the gap.
High-value primary data collection gaps
These gaps point to new data collection or enhancement opportunities where existing secondary studies may not be enough.