The Inventory of Gambling Situations (IGS) is a 63-item self-report questionnaire that gives clinicians insight into a client’s specific gambling pattern. The IGS details the situations in which that particular client has gambled excessively during the past 12 months. The questionnaire then creates a client profile that can be used to develop an individualized treatment plan.
Ideally, a clinician should be administer the IGS to a client with problem gambling in order to facilitate a conversation about high-risk situations. The IGS identifies the types of situations that are most likely to trigger problem gambling behaviour for the client. The awareness of these situations helps the clinician teach clients to identify and address their areas of vulnerability.
The IGS is easily administered online, and as with most self-report instruments, depends on clients' willingness to be honest about themselves and their gambling behaviour.
For more information please refer to the IGS Manual, the development and validation of the IGS, and the cross validation and revision of the IGS. If you do not accept the Terms of Use for the IGS tool, please do not use this tool.
Your responses are automatically saved in your browser (and only your browser). You can use the progress bar at the bottom to navigate back to answered questions. You will be able to view your results by selecting the "View Results" button below once you have completed all items, and you may reset the questionnaire at any time by selecting the "Reset Questionnaire" button.
I gambled heavily when...
Inventory of Gambling Situations
As noted before, the IGS is used to determine the situations in which a person is most at risk of losing control over your gambling. These results can then help the therapist determine which situations to work on. For example if a person scores high on Negative Emotion than lessons on coping with depression may be most helpful. On the other hand if the client scores high on Pleasant Emotions or Need for Excitement, it might be helpful to focus on alternative leisure activities.
The following is a summary of your results that provides you with a summary of your situational risk profile. These are the situations in which you are most likely to lose control of your gambling.
A high score on an IGS scale indicates the type of situation in which you have often gambled heavily in the past. This information can be very valuable to a therapist and client in treatment planning. When you are aware of what particular situations trigger you, it will be easier to plan specific strategies that are targeted to the problem.
Please note that the IGS does not diagnose if a person has a problem. It only indicates which situations tend to be problematic. If you are concerned about your scores on any of these scales, please talk to your therapist.
Client Profile
All your sub-scales scores are below 50 which suggests that you have relatively mild problems, however the scores may help you understand when you are most likely to gamble heavily.
When all scales are very high it may indicate that you need to think in more detail about the different situations to recognize those times when you feel most strongly compelled to gamble and those when you are less likely to gamble.
Sub Scale Ranking
| Rank | Sub Scale | Index Score |
|---|---|---|
Highest Four Sub Scales
You gambled heavily when...
Extra Items
The following items are note part of any sub scale, but are included individually because they may be useful in treatment and/or their contents may need special attention.
You stated that you gambled heavily “When ”.
This may mean that you are in the habit of concealing your gambling from family and friends. You may be so accustomed to gambling in these circumstances that you do so whenever you get the chance.
You may need to look at arranging your life and finances to make it harder to gam- ble. You may also want to think about the way in which habit is controlling your deci- sion-making.
You stated that you gambled heavily “When ”.
This may indicate a problem with self-esteem, or may suggest that money and winning are important to your self-esteem.
You may want to look at alternative ways to feel good about yourself.
You stated that you gambled heavily “When ”.
This could indicate an alcohol or other drug problem that might need treatment.
You should also explore with your therapist the relationship between substance use and gambling: does drinking (or using other drugs) trigger your gambling, or does gambling trigger your drinking, or both?
You stated that you gambled heavily “When ”.
This suggests that you and your therapist should look at the relationship between your legal problems and your gambling.
Do legal troubles trigger the gambling or have the legal problems resulted from pre- vious gambling, or both?
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