South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA) Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Always
- Almost always
- Sometimes
- Never
- Yes
- No
- Yes
- No
South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA) Test - Description and methodology of the test
Designed for adolescents who want to examine gambling-related experiences, this assessment organizes answers around control, consequences, and financial behavior. The South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA) Test offers a focused way to notice patterns that may otherwise be minimized. As an adolescent gambling screening tool, it can help a respondent decide whether gambling deserves closer personal, family, or professional attention.
What This Assessment Explores
The questions focus on behaviors linked with gambling problems: chasing losses, exceeding plans, difficulty stopping, concealment, conflict, borrowing, and disruption at school or work. They are intended for adolescents reflecting on their own experiences, so the result describes reported patterns rather than outside judgment.
The main themes are:
- Control and escalation show whether gambling exceeds planned time, money, or limits.
- Consequences show effects on relationships, school, work, or emotional wellbeing.
- Secrecy and finances indicate concealment, regret, borrowing, or obtaining money to gamble.
The gambling problem severity test presents one overall scale, Gambling Problem Severity Level, scored from 0-12. Its displayed bands are No/Social gambling (0-1), Problem gambling (2-2), and High severity gambling problems (3-12).
Methodology and Scientific Basis
Structurally, this is a structured self-report screening assessment: respondents self-report their experiences through one frequency item about returning to win back losses and yes/no questions on consequences, control, criticism, guilt, concealment, conflict, missed responsibilities, borrowing, and stealing. In the SOGS-RA questionnaire, answers are aggregated into the displayed total, but item-level point assignments are not documented for this online presentation; the 0-12 range cannot establish how individual responses are weighted.
Psychometric studies of the published SOGS-RA address adolescent gambling-problem severity, reliability, validity, and community use. That evidence applies to the published instrument; this online presentation has no separately stated standardization or norms. The SOGS-RA's conceptual lineage reaches the South Oaks Gambling Screen created by Henry R. Lesieur and Sheila B. Blume.
Interpretation should account for honest reporting, memory, current circumstances, and misunderstood items. A high result indicates a pattern consistent with more serious gambling problems and may warrant qualified diagnostic evaluation; it is not, by itself, a diagnosis. The assessment helps decide what to discuss, what support may be appropriate, and whether broader assessment is needed.
- Winters, Ken C., Randy D. Stinchfield, and Jayne Fulkerson. "Toward the development of an adolescent gambling problem severity scale." Journal of Gambling Studies 9, no. 1 (1993): 63-84. 10.1007/BF01019925.
- Wiebe, J. M., B. J. Cox, and B. G. Mehmel. "The South Oaks Gambling Screen Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA): further psychometric findings from a community sample." Journal of Gambling Studies 16, nos. 2-3 (2000): 275-288. 10.1023/A:1009489132628.
- Poulin, Christiane. "An assessment of the validity and reliability of the SOGS-RA." Journal of Gambling Studies 18, no. 1 (2002): 67-93. 10.1023/A:1014584213557.
- Lesieur, Henry R., and Sheila B. Blume. "The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS): a new instrument for the identification of pathological gamblers." American Journal of Psychiatry 144, no. 9 (1987): 1184-1188. 10.1176/ajp.144.9.1184.
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