摘要：This paper presents results of a pilot-study about adolescent gambling in the City of Zagreb. The survey was conducted during March 2010 in three Zagreb secondary schools: a grammar school, a four-year vocational school and a three-year vocational school. A total of 261 students from the first to the final year of their secondary education participated in the study (M=58.2%; F=41.8%). Age range of participants was from 13 to 19 years (Mage=16.51; SDage=1.15). The aim of this paper is to explore the contribution of psychopathic personality traits as well as risk and delinquent behaviour in explaining severity of gambling problems. Several instruments were used in the research: (1) Basic Demographic Characteristics Questionnaire, (2) South Oaks Gambling Screen - version revised for adolescents, SOGS-RA (Winters, Stinchfield i Fulkerson, 1993), (3) Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory – YPI (Andershed, Kerr, Stattin i Levander, 2002) and (4) Youth Self-Reported Delinquency and Risk Behaviour Questionnaire - SRDP-2007 (Ručević, Ajduković i Šincek, 2009). Hierarchical regression analysis was performed only on a sample of boys (N = 150) since girls were not significantly represented in the group of risk / problem gamblers. The results of hierarchical regression analysis show that the best predictors of gambling severity among boys are the propensity to committing the crimes of theft and robbery, as well as the tendency to risky sexual behaviour. In other words, other risk and delinquent behaviour can greatly contribute to explaining gambling severity. Interestingly, the factor Impulsivity-Irresponsibility ceases to be a significant predictor when the behavioural aspect (risk and delinquent behaviour) is incorporated in the model. Findings in this paper are in accordance with foreign researches which support the thesis that gambling, although a specific behaviour in terms of its characteristics shouldn’t be viewed separately, but rather as a part of a “problem behaviour syndrome”.
关键词：gambling; adolescents; psychopathic traits; risk and delinquent behaviour
