Introduction

Estimates of the extent and incidence of involvement in, as well as descriptions of the key forms of gambling are presented in the first part of each chapter devoted to them. The second part explores the relationship between form of gambling and the social indicators as a basis for generating hypotheses about gambling. There is no simple continuity between the two objectives of description and generation of hypotheses; and this discontinuity stems from the very different assumptions underlying the testing of established theories, and the open-ended exploratory search for unidentified relationships to yield different and perhaps better theories.