Assessment of attitudes towards sports betting and effects of sports betting on university students

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore in detail the attitudes towards sports betting among university students and the effects of sports betting on university students, taking Makerere University as the case study. The study examined female and male students' attitudes towards sports betting participation which included both moral and economic attitudes and related sports betting harm in the age of (18 and above), with a sample size (n=324). Respondents included 200 male students and 124 female students obtained by simple random sampling. Data were analysed using frequency tables and percentages in STATA. The study found out that respondents who neither agreed nor disagreed that sports betting is immoral were slightly greater with 90 (27.78%), those who disagreed were 82 (25.31%), those who agreed were 71 (21.91%), those who strongly agreed were 61 (18.83%) while the least number of respondents strongly disagreed 20 (6.17%) that sports betting is an immoral activity, the respondents who neither agreed nor disagreed that sports betting has more negative effects than positive effects were 110 (33.95%), those who agreed were 104 (32.1%), those who strongly agreed were 92(28.4%), those who disagreed where 16 (4.94%) and those who strongly disagreed were 2 (0.62%) The study is intended to be of significant help to government and organizations with the intentions of starting up projects and policies to regulate Sports Betting activities and also the findings from the study will lay a foundation upon which other studies will be explored. The main difficulty in the study was data collection as some students were not willing to participate in the study as well as obtaining adequate information for literature arising from the fact that there has been less research conducted in Uganda about attitudes towards Sports Betting. The study assumed that the respondents provided honest and reliable information and literature was reviewed to aid understanding of the aspect in question.