Metacognitions About Gambling Among Chinese Gamblers: Translation, Validation, and Application to Understanding Gambling Disorder and Responsible Gambling

Being the only city with legalized casinos in China, Macao has a long-term need for risk factor identification and assessment for gambling disorder. Responding to such a need, this study aimed to validate a translated Chinese version of the Metacognitions about Gambling Questionnaire (MGQ) among Chinese gamblers and apply such a tool to enhance the understanding of gambling disorder tendency and responsible gambling behavior from a metacognitive perspective. We obtained a probability sample of 604 lifetime adult gamblers in Macao, China, through a telephone survey, of which the data of 480 past-year gamblers (M_age = 41.81, SD = 14.73; 45.6% women) was used for data analyses. As its original version, the translated Chinese version of MGQ displayed the two-factor structure (i.e., positive and negative metacognitions regarding gambling) with satisfactory model fit (χ² (32) = 67.69, CFI =.94, RMSEA =.07, SRMR =.05). Both these two factors had satisfactory reliability (α =.74 and.73) and validity (positive correlation with gambling disorder tendency and negative correlation with responsible gambling behavior). In addition, these metacognitions significantly accounted for the variances of gambling disorder tendency (i.e., positively correlated) and responsible gambling behavior (i.e., negatively correlated) after ruling out demographic and other confounding risk effects. In comparison, negative metacognitions cast a more salient impact than positive metacognitions on gambling disorder tendency and responsible gambling behavior. MGQ can provide a reliable and valid assessment of Chinese gamblers’ metacognitions about gambling; it also displays a promising potential in delineating the underlying mechanism of gambling disorder tendency and responsible gambling behavior.