Personalized Feedback Interventions for Indicated Prevention of Gambling Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

While personalized feedback interventions (PFIs) are a promising indicated prevention strategy for reducing gambling behavior and gambling harm immediately following intervention, no meta-analysis has examined the durability of these reductions. The current systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine the effect of PFIs immediately following the intervention and in the months following the intervention. The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, PsycINFO, PubMed were searched in January 2024 to identify randomized controlled trials comparing PFIs to standard care or inactive control conditions. The Cochrane Risk of Bias tool version 2.0 assessed risk of bias. Correlated, hierarchical random effect meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effect of PFIs at postintervention and follow-up. Eighteen studies representing 9,869 participants were identified. PFIs had nonsignificant, small reductions in outcomes relative to comparison conditions at postintervention (g = -0.06, 95% CI [-0.15, 0.02]). However, PFIs produced significant, small reductions in outcomes relative to comparison conditions at follow up (g = -0.10, 95% CI [-0.18, -0.02]). Therapist facilitated PFIs (g = -0.18) had significantly better outcomes than non-therapist facilitated PFIs (g = -0.03), and PFIs incorporating motivational interviewing (g = -0.19) had significantly better outcomes than PFIs not incorporating motivational interviewing (g = -0.02). However, there was limited statistical power to estimate effect sizes at precise time intervals over the follow-up period. The field requires more randomized controlled trials with longitudinal assessments to estimate the effectiveness of PFIs for gambling in the months following receipt of the intervention. PROSPERO (CRD42024567384).