bwin launches gambling addiction research project

The research will be conducted by The Division on Addictions at the Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Affiliate who bwin have been working with for the last three years.

The aim of the Transparency Project is to collect and archive high quality addiction-related privately-funded data from around the world and to provide a valuable resource for academic research across a broad range of scientific areas, including psychology, economics, health policy and public health.

Both parties hope to make data available to scientists so that they can advance the available empirical evidence and knowledge base about addiction.

bwin will make available its anonymised activity data from over 40,000 users which underpins the world’s largest longitudinal research study into problem gaming. The Division on Addictions created this repository to promote transparency for privately funded science and offer better access to scientific information.

Dr. Howard Shaffer, Associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Division on Addictions defended the scientific study from the criticisms that often come from researchers, advocates, media and the public who are distrustful of their results.

“We seek to improve this complex situation by increasing accessibility to privately-funded data. It is our hope that this increased access will provide the impetus for the development of public-private research partnerships and simultaneously advance what we know about addictive behaviour,” he said.

Manfred Bodner, Co-CEO of bwin, said: “Greater access to scientific information, in this case actual internet gaming activity records, should accelerate our ability to understand problem gaming, and also to implement the mechanisms necessary to detect it early. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to prevent it from occurring in the first place.”