Development and psychometric evaluation of the Brief Adolescent Gambling Screen (BAGS)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the initial reliability, validity and classification accuracy of a new brief screen for adolescent problem gambling. The three-item Brief Adolescent Gambling Screen (BAGS) was derived from the nine-item Gambling Problem Severity Subscale (GPSS) of the Canadian Adolescent Gambling Inventory (CAGI) using a secondary analysis of existing CAGI data. The sample of 105 adolescents included 49 females and 56 males from Canada who completed the CAGI, a self-administered measure of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Pathological Gambling, and a clinician-administered diagnostic interview including the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Pathological Gambling (both of which were adapted to yield DSM-5 Gambling Disorder diagnosis). A stepwise multivariate discriminant function analysis selected three GPSS items as the best predictors of a diagnosis of Gambling Disorder. The BAGS demonstrated satisfactory estimates of reliability, validity and classification accuracy and was equivalent to the nine-item GPSS of the CAGI and the BAGS was more accurate than the SOGS-RA. The BAGS estimates of classification accuracy include hit rate = 0.95, sensitivity = 0.88, specificity = 0.98, false positive rate = 0.02, and false negative rate = 0.12. Since these classification estimates are preliminary, derived from a relatively small sample size, and based upon the same sample from which the items were selected, it will be important to cross-validate the BAGS with larger and more diverse samples. The BAGS should be evaluated for use as a screening tool in both clinical and school settings as well as epidemiological surveys.