This article evaluates how a plurality of research methods has served a research program that has functioned in a much-needed area of research: the role of housing and recovery residences in addiction recovery. The review focuses on one mutually supportive recovery residence model, called Oxford House, which represents more than 1,700 democratic,…

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994) is often used to assess decision-making deficits in clinical populations. The interpretation of the results hinges on 3 key assumptions: (a) healthy participants learn to prefer the good options over the bad options; (b) healthy participants show homogeneous choice behavior;…

The purpose of this article is to examine the phenomenon of pathological gambling and addiction from the perspective of writer and teacher A.H Almaas. By drawing on his Diamond Mind approach we trace the origin of addictive behaviors and pathological gambling to narcissistic wounding, which constitutes the loss of connection with the Essential…

More than 5 million deaths a year are attributable to tobacco smoking, making it the largest single cause of preventable death worldwide. The primary addictive component in tobacco is nicotine. Its addictive power is exemplified by the fact that by far most attempts to quit smoking fail. It is therefore mandatory to understand the biological…

Empirical research examining the situational characteristics of gambling and their effect on gambling behaviour is limited but growing. This experimental pilot investigation reports the first ever empirical study into the combined effects of both music and light on gambling behaviour. While playing an online version of roulette, 56 participants…

The paper outlines the advantages, disadvantages, and other implications of using the Internet to collect data from gaming addicts. Drawing from experience of numerous addiction studies carried out online by the author, and by reviewing the methodological literature examining online data collection among both gambling addicts and video game…

Video game playing has received increased academic interest over the last few decades, particularly with regard to the psychological understanding of addiction. Based on the many studies carried out by the authors, this paper summarises some of the methodological challenges which may arise when studying video game players, including obstacles…

This commentary highlights indigenous public health research from a special issue of the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction dealing with child maltreatment, mental health, substance abuse and gambling. We focus on the emerging and growing research movement in Indigenous research through three important themes: 1) worldview and…

Recent evidence indicates that more and more women gamble and develop gambling problems and pathological gambling (PG). Research has further indicated that female and male PGs differ in their clinical characteristics. The aim of this study is to do a critical review of the literature concerning clinical characteristics of female pathological…

Recruiting participants for a research project can be challenging. Incentives, particularly monetary incentives, have been shown to increase response rates. Offering a monetary incentive for participation in a research study can become very costly for the investigators. For this reason some researchers, including graduate students involved in…

Objectives: To provide recommendations that will build a better foundation for research on youth smoking cessation. Methods: The Youth Tobacco Collaborative Cessation panel evaluated youth tobacco cessation literature and convened meetings to reach consensus. Results: Methodological issues include design, recruitment and retention, follow-up,…