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Article History

Received: 4 February 2020

Accepted: 8 October 2020

First Online: 21 October 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The overall project was reviewed by the national Ethics board of Sweden (file number 2019-04176), which expressed that it had no ethical concerns, and that the type of data included (without any possibility to identify individuals) did not require formal ethical approval according to Swedish law. Before an individual in the Userneeds web panel was able to enter the questionnaire, a written online information about the study was provided, and the online informed consent was required in order to proceed into the questionnaire.

: Not applicable.

: The first author holds a researcher position at Lund University which is funded by the state-owned gambling operator AB Svenska Spel, as part of that body’s responsible gambling policies. Other funding for other current projects is received from the research council of the same organization, i.e. the research council of ABSvenska Spel, as well as from the research council of the Swedish state-owned alcohol retail monopoly, Systembolaget, and from the research council of the Swedish Enforcement Authority, as well as from the regional hospital organization. A previous project in a different area of research (misuse of prescription drugs) was carried out with the first author as a sub-investigator in a multicenter project, run by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in the USA. The RTI is a non-commercial research institute which received the funding for that overall project from Shire pharmaceuticals. The first author of the present paper did not receive any personal fees from the financing body. In addition, ongoing study collaboration is prepared in a study where Kontigo care, a company providing follow-up and assessment tools in treatment, is involved in offering technical follow-up tools to a clinical follow-up gambling study, without any other direct financial payments to the researchers.