Efficacy Of Brief Motivational Interviewing Intervention For Treating Gambling Disorder Among University Students In Kenya: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT

With the high uptake of gambling in Kenya, especially among University students, it is inevitable that some of them may end up suffering from gambling disorder. Apart from compromised psychological health, disordered gamblers experience difficulties in their financial and social wellbeing. Currently, there is lack of evidence based interventions for gambling disorder that have been developed and empirically tested in Kenya. This research sought to establish the efficacy of Brief Motivational Interviewing Intervention (BMII) for treating gambling disorder among university students in Kenya. The intervention was guided by Motivational Interviewing principles and was delivered in psycho - educational group format. The study had four specific objectives; to find out the prevalence of gambling disorder among gamblers; to determine the efficacy of BMII in decreasing gambling disorder symptoms; to determine the efficacy of BMII in decreasing frequency of gambling and; to determine the efficacy of BMII in decreasing typical amount of money placed per bet. The research design used was a parallel group, two arm, superiority randomized control trial. The treatment group received the intervention; BMII. The control group did not. The study targeted university students who gamble. Multistage sampling approach was used. Simple random sampling was used to select the university. Purposive sampling was used to select the study participants. Randomization was then used to assign the participants to the treatment and control groups. A total of 228 students participated in the study. The findings of the study revealed that a majority (69.3%) of participants were disordered gamblers while 68.9% gambled more than twice a week and 56.6% of the participants typically placed between 51 - 100 Kenya shillings per bet. One way ANOVA was calculated to determine the differences between control and treatment groups at pre - test and post - test. Paired samples t - tests were calculated to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that there were significant differences in symptoms of gambling disorder between treatment and control group at post - test at p