NATIONAL GAMBLING IMPACT STUDY COMMISSION

MS. VELDMAN: I'd ask you to turn to Exhibit A in your handout. It would be the second page. I'm going to use this as a guide to give you an overview of the several tasks the NORC staff are already busily engaged in and will continue to be over the next ten months as we assist the Commission in reaching your research objectives.

The box on the left represents activities associated with the objective of obtaining a better understanding of the social and economic impacts of gambling upon a community. NORC will pursue this in both the quantitative and qualitative approach. Our primary effort will go into developing 100 statistic data base, gathering social and economic indicators from 100 communities. Ten of these communities will then be chosen to receive more of an in depth qualitative approach of case studies using focus groups and key informing interviews.

The second box represents the patron survey which we are going to begin working on the pilot study, and if the Commissioners approve that, we'll proceed with the main survey. That's intended to reach the research objective -- actually the stated objectives were twofold in the RFP, which is determining what percentage of facilities' patrons are problem or pathological gamblers at any given time and what percentage of a gaming facilities' revenues are generated by problem or pathological gamblers. Another very important, not primary objective, from NORC's perspective of this component is to increase the number of problem and pathological gamblers that we'll be able to combine with those that we obtain from the general population survey, to be able to analyze them as a sub-group, which brings me to the third box, which is the general population survey.

I understand the primary research objective for this is to obtain a national estimate of the number of problem and pathological gamblers in the United States, and also to gain a better understanding of gambling behaviors associated with increased availability of gambling opportunities since the mid-1970's when the last gambling commission met and collected data. The parts of the general population survey involved obtaining 3,000 interviews with adults; 700 interviews with 16 and 17-year-olds; and approximately 100 interviews from people that reside in homes that do not have phones.

Now, I'm going to ask for the next part of this presentation, Howard Speizer.