Lottery-Style Gambling Table 6 presents the frequency with which the respondents gambled in certain ways and on certain games during the 12 months preceding the survey. As the table clearly illustrates, lottery-style gambling was by far the most common form of gambling in which the employees engaged, with over 25% of the employees playing at least once per week and over 90% having played at least once in the previous year.
However, it should be remembered that participation in this form of gambling undoubtedly has since declined considerably due to the recently enacted restriction banning OLG employees from playing OLG lottery games. 7 The overwhelming popularity of lottery-style games, as compared to other forms of gambling, parallels the findings of both Wiebe et al. (2006) and Dangerfield (2004), although the respondents in this study seemed to play lottery-style games even more than the respondents in either of those studies.
For instance, Wiebe et al. found that in the general Ontario population 52.4% had gambled on lottery tickets in the past 12 months (Wiebe et al. differentiated between ―lottery tickets,‖ ―raffle tickets,‖ and ―scratch tickets,‖ but lottery tickets had the most participation).
Nevertheless, Wiebe et al. also found that 35.7% of those people who had played the lottery in the past 12 months had done so at least once per week, while in this study the proportion was 29.3%. In her study of Alberta casino employees, Dangerfield found that in the previous six months 21.4% had played lottery-style games at least once per week, and 21.5% had played them between one and three times per month.
Final speech
During this study‘s interviews, many of the participants corroborated the apparent overwhelming popularity of lottery-style games among Ontario casino employees. Moreover, several interviewees remarked that, prior to April 1, employees frequently purchased tickets during the workday and on their work premises, often pooling their money together in groups. For example, one interviewee claimed:
