The effects of Sports Betting on the moral behaviour of students in colleges
The study examined the effect of betting on the moral behaviour of students in Colleges of Education in India. The research design used for this study was descriptive. Employing a multi-stage sampling technique by means of combined proportionate and simple random sampling covered a total of three hundred and two (302) students from five Colleges of Education in India. Questionnaires were used to collect data for the study.The data collected were analysed by well-structured frequency counts and percentage analysis techniques, and means were determined and standard deviations were worked out. Results of the study showed that students thought there existed positive degrees of influence of visiting sports betting sites on their moral behaviours. They had the perception that going to a sports site was no crime. Their view regarding its economic viability rested purely on their subject understanding. Students were not clear if doing that was against their faith, or if it was merely for lazy people who did not want to work.Throughout this process, students confessed that gambling is an addiction that is risky and tends to bring negative to society. Therefore, it suggests that even though students might see gambling as a profit-accruing phenomenon, gambling is an addiction that is all the more dangerous. One of such recommendations includes an active awareness campaign for students by the Guidance and Counseling Units on exaggerated claims on winnings, and thereafter their social consequences. The work has served to develop the corpus of accumulated knowledge on the phenomenon of sports betting through providing a contextual viewpoint of that, especially with respect to Indian youth at the collegiate level.
INTRODUCTION
Gambling is "the act of staking something, particularly money, on the outcome of an event with an uncertain result, generally with a view to gaining material prizes and/or money." Sports betting is one form of betting which has developed over the ages, while betting on sports events has been embraced as a more recent activity. Unlike in the past, whereby one was limited to physically betting on the outcome of either a horse (or greyhound) race, they have branched out and now allow betting on the outcome of team sports. India too is not far behind in the surge of popularity of legalized sports betting throughout the world, with many sports betting sites sprouting up across the world, and betting in India is on the rise.
People have spoken very little about sports betting in India and many other parts of the Asian continent because of the alleged immorality attached to it. However, it has now established a basic credibility of its own and found its place among other activities in its spirit of acceptance due to rising interest in European football matches-particularly from leagues, such as English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, and other major international leagues. While previously the entire clientele was mostly older sports bettors who happened to have an interest in European soccer matches, today, it is the youth and the trendy who have taken over. The new age media and ad agencies portray sports betting as a sober, glamourous, fashionable, and sexy activity to further lure youngsters into betting amid the onslaught of new-age advertising campaigns concerned with the deregulation of global sports betting.
It is becoming a burning issue because sports betting has lately drawn a number of seniors and freshmen from high school. Most of them are below 18 years old. Some of the participants develop an addiction to the sport itself and have to stake all they possess. Some even kill themselves once this addiction has set in as a coping mechanism when they gamble and lose. A case in point is that of a 30-year-old man in 2011 who took his life by hanging himself after losing his bet in New Delhi. In the suicide note, he wrote that he had given up on life since he staked his money on sports and sold off his car and other belongings that he lost. According to a report by the Gaming Commission of India, in 2014, 34% of youngsters had indulged in the sport of sports betting; by 2016, this number rose to 70%. This means that the incidence of betting among the youth has risen over the years, creating further cause for concern to warrant such an actual study.
In South Asia (SA), sports betting studies have been few and far between, most of which were conducted in various countries around the world. Most of the studies in SA have focused on the other side of sports betting, its societal benefits. Sewor studied gaming within the Indian casino industry: casino jobs and she direct benefits to the inhabitants of host communities. Botwe reviewed critically online sports betting/gambling and its negative effects on young people in India. Otherwise, very few of such studies have been done except for the educational institutions in Indian Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh regions, and that's what this study aims to achieve. Angelo and Yeboah studied the attitudes towards sports betting among Maharashtra state college students in India. And, it was obvious that for Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh towns in India, this topic until now had no similar studies. It is precisely within this scope that the research was undertaken-this investigation of the effect of sports betting on the moral behaviors of college students of education in India.
The purpose of this research is to provide answers to questions like: "What are the effects that sports betting have on the moral behaviors of students?"; "What are the motivations from students in the college of education for sports betting?"; "In what ways does sports betting impact the academic performance of students in colleges of education?" Respondents in the study are students from St.Joesph College of education, Berekum College of Education, St. Ambrose College of Education, Atebubu College of Education, and Al-Faruq College of Education from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh regions of India. The findings of this study, therefore, would inform humanity about sports betting. Armed with this knowledge, proper policies and interventions to mitigate the ills of sports betting on students and youth in the nation could be instituted.
METHODOLOGY
Research Design
In general, it would be wrong to say that one would maintain some descriptors for purposes of this survey of sports-betting perceptions among student respondents, more so, the descriptive cross-sectional survey research is what was used to describe in very relevant detail specific phenomena regarding student concepts attached to sports betting. The questionnaire was the main instrument of collecting data for this study. Self-administered, structured questionnaires for students were used for this study. The rationale for selecting this modality was to give the respondents a high sense of confidentiality and anonymity. The descriptive research design seeks to faithfully portray and depict the actors, events, and circumstances surrounding an occurrence. It describes extant incidences through the collection and presentation of factual and authentic data about them. An improvement could be realized when one considered an approach for topic research that would allow an incontrovertible for the identification of the study population dialogue, from which data can be erected into a sizable pool of responses by diverse respondents. Some disadvantages of a descriptive survey include the time and effort that need to be committed to ensuring representative sampling and the knowledge accrued through years of conducting surveys. Consideration in this respect when using a questionnaire has tended to streamline things by making them clear-cut. Once again, it is through this modification in choice that the researcher is able to analyze, observe, and describe the effects of sports betting on students' moral behavior at the colleges of education at a given point in time.
Population
Population, according to Kothari, is all items concerning which the required data could be collected. In the present study, the population consisted of all final-year students in the colleges of education in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh Regions. The study took place in India, specifically in the Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh Regions, which comprised five colleges of education: St. Joseph College of Education; Berekum College of Education; St. Ambrose College of Education; Atebubu College of Education; and Al-Faruq College of Education, with a total enrollment of 1,432 student-teachers.
Sample and Sampling Procedure
The Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination table guided the selection of sample sizes in the colleges of education of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. A total sample of 302 students was selected from five colleges of education in the regions of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh of India. Multi-stage sampling was used to select all 302 students in the five colleges of education in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. First, a list of the five educational colleges in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh was provided by the Educational Information Management System. The second step generated a list of all the final-year students in each college. The third step allocated sample size to each college in proportion so that colleges with a larger population received larger samples. The total number of final-year students from each college was divided by the total number of final-year students from all five colleges of education (1432) to calculate the proportion of the sample size to each college. This ratio was further multiplied by the total sample size from all colleges of education (302) for the study, then done for each of the colleges until a total sample of 302 was reached. Finally, the selected respondents were randomly sampled from each of the identified colleges using the lottery method, which allowed each selected respondent to have an equal opportunity to be selected based on this sampling method. For this procedure, students from different colleges were given two pieces of paper. One was marked "Yes" and the other was marked "No." Students who received the paper marked "Yes" were included in the study.
Research Instruments
Surveys are systematic tools and methods for collecting data in a quicker duration involving a number of respondents, especially where the target population is well within reach and the time, money, or logistical constraints render the use of interview on each of the subjects unfeasible.
The above-mentioned reasons prompted this study to use structured questionnaires for purposes of surveying the respondents. The four-part surveys contained closed-ended questions written on a five-point Likert scale for convenience in answering questions (1=Strongly Disagree (SD), 2= Disagree (D), 3= A Bit Uncertain (U), 4= Agree (A), and 5= Strongly Agree (SA)). Thus, the analysis could be carried out using descriptive and inferential statistics. Altogether, there were 25 items in the student surveys. Section A had two items that inquired into the demographic details of the respondents. Section B contained eight items that related to the attitude toward sports betting in this study. Section C comprised seven items aimed at understanding why students bet on sports. Finally, Section D, made up of eight items, assessed how sports betting influences the academic performance of the students.
Validity and Reliability of the Instrument
The testing of validity and reliability was undertaken by the research instrument. As per Brenner (2000), validity is the degree of such support from theory and evidence for the interpretation of the results implied by the use of tests. In other words, the validity of an instrument is established when it can strongly measure and develop the target variable. The instrument was subjected to both face and content validity tests. The experts were set to analyze the questionnaire with respect to determining if the items measure the desirable characteristics or traits in an effort to guarantee the face validity of such items. These experts were also knowledgeable about the construct under knowledge construction and were supposed to exam the questionnaire items for legibility, clarity and comprehensive nature in terms of content validity to finally conclude the items that would be included in the final questionnaire.
Twenty-five student teachers at Holy Child College of Education in India's Western Region completed questionnaires administered in a pilot study. Since Holy Child College of Education has also promoted supported teaching in other educational institutions in the Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh Regions, subjects of teaching have been united in the course of a field experiment. Each item produced by two research questions guiding the study was analyzed for data, and Cronbach's alpha was calculated. For the constructs of perception and the construct of obstacles faced by student teachers during the SUPT program, the respective values of Cronbach's alpha were found to be 0.72 and 0.82. Dependability with regard to research, however, as stated by Fraenkel and Wallen, is conventionally taken as 0.70 or higher. Hence the tools that were used in the study are validated and thus of sound quality for collecting relevant data.
Data Analysis
This study aimed to examine the influence of sports wagering on the moral behavior of students in the Colleges of Education from the Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh Regions of India. The data collected through descriptive statistics were analyzed to give answers to the research questions going through the whole study. More specifically, the data collected from the questionnaires were analyzed by frequency counts, percentages, and mean of means for Study questions 1, 2, and 3. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 25 was utilized for the actual calculation of all analysis results.