The Prevalence of Sports Betting in Tanzania Secondary School Students

The purpose of this paper was to determine the prevalence of sports betting among secondary school students in Tanzania. The study was conducted in the Dodoma region and covered four secondary schools in Dodoma City. The probability sampling procedure was used to select students randomly for everyone to have the chance of being involved. The judgmental sampling technique were used to collect information from the head of discipline units and class teachers, and simple random sampling was used to select both public and private secondary schools. The study administered questionnaires and interview questions to students, classes, head of discipline units, and class teachers. The questionnaires and interview questions targeted at picturing out the rate at which sports betting was intruding students. The finding shows that students aged between 10-17 years were reported to have high interest and feelings to take the risks of betting. The findings also show that females students are less involved in betting activities compared to male students. Besides, it was found that male students spend more of their precious time 6-10 hours a day in betting compared to female students. Furthermore, it was revealed that majority of students had taken part in more than one bet among the identified games including bet-way, premier bet, sport pesa, and tatu Mzuka.s


Introduction
This paper discusses the prevalence of sports betting among secondary school students in Tanzania. The sample population assessed is the contextual representative of betting prevalence in Tanzanian secondary schools. Sports betting is a form of gambling that intends placing a wager (bet) on the outcome of sports events especially for international and national games (football match) with the prestigious English premier league, Spanish-La Liga, and Italian-Seria A league which have gained the most attention and local National league (Koros, 2016). Sports betting is one of the online gambling fastest growing in the world and a source of revenue for many nations. According to Bourdeau (2011); Conrad (2008); Davies and Abraham (2001); Koros (2016); Sammut (2010); the primary goal of sports bettors is to win money just like other gamblers based on the game he/she bets for on the bookmakers odds. The growth of the internet and mobile devices has made betting generally much more accessible in developing countries alike to developed countries particularly for young and youth adults.
The estimate shows that, between 50-70% of young people and youth adults in developing countries have been engaging in some form of gambling including sports betting, lotto, bingo, poker, and charity sweepstake (Adebayo, 1998;Devlin & Peppard, 1996;Engwall, Hunter & Steinberg, 2002;Koros, 2016). These reports further ascertains that, sports betting remains an illegal activity for young people under the age of 18 in many countries of the world including Tanzania. In recent years, the world has witnessed the increase of young people involved in sports betting something which needs attention of public health practitioners and policymakers attend the prevalence of this epic for underage as many adolescent bet daily (Bourdeau, 2011;Conrad, 2008.

The context of sports betting in Tanzania
In Tanzania, sportsbooks were legal since 1999, but it become famous until 2013 when the first license to go live was issued led to a drastic increase of online sports betting site services in the big cities (www.gamingzion.com/sportsbook/Tanzania). Sports betting are largely found in the metropolitan cities of Dar-es-salaam, Dodoma, Arusha, Mwanza, and Morogoro due to presence of network television programming with large sport viewing audiences (Davies and Abram, 2001). However, sports betting is becoming more or less popular even in the small towns and centers all over the country. Nowadays people of different statuses in Tanzania are enjoying online and mobile sports betting services at every corner of the country. It is offered through betting shops or by mobile phones and online platforms like TVs and radios for advertisement purposes. Some of the advertising messages aired include lottery SMS which always is forwarded to mobile phone users in the Swahili language; hongera! Bashiri mechi 4 au 6 tu ushinde soka hadi 75,000,000; na hadi 60,000,000 inaweza kuwa yako leo ukibashiri mechi 6 kwa mchezo mpya soka jackpot! EPL serie A, Laliga zinacheza leo. (Translated congratulation! Bet 4 to 6 matches to win up to 75,000,000 to 60,000,000 million this can be yours if you bet today in EPL, Seria A, and Laliga matches).
In the globalized era, it is currently common in Tanzania to find children aged 13 up to 17 years owning mobile phones with accessibility to internet cafe services. It becomes very taxing to impinge children under 18 years old from sports betting since these games are played through mobile phones and internet services. The prevalence rate is recorded high among this age group as they active in sporting activities, and the case is more serious to boys than girls. The research report shows that the most betting games commonly for Tanzanian young generation are Biko, Bingo, Tatu Mzuka, Sport-Pesa, bet way, premier bet, and sport pesa. Research further shows that prevalence in sports betting among students is genuinely attached to betting feeling development due to attraction from advertisements posted and aired to them through social networking and media systems. Students who are bettors are more likely to take the risks of placing bets on different occasions with varying frequencies and environment. Therefore, this paper presents the prevalence rate of secondary school students on the development of feelings, the extent betting risks is taken, and the frequencies of betting involvement among students.

Methods
The study used a mixed approach which practically was quantitative and qualitative. The qualitative approach provided detailed content based on thematic understanding while the quantitative approach provided more computable generalized views on the problem domain respectively. On the other hand, the study employed a pragmatism philosophical foundation, which accepted the ideas to be applicable only if they supported actions. This included both positivist and interpretivism which was vital in exploring concepts from more than one world view by accepting multiple realities as they appeared on the ground (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011).
The study participants involved form one up to form five students from four secondary schools of which two were publicly owned and two private-owned in Dodoma City, head of discipline units, and class teachers. The probability sampling procedure was used to select students randomly for everyone to have the chance of being involved. The judgmental sampling technique were used to collect information from the head of discipline units and class teachers, and simple random sampling was used to select both public and private secondary schools. The study used the popular standard formula for sample size calculation known as Cochran's sample size formula (1977) to get a proper representative sample.
The selected sample size enabled the study to gather detailed information and be able to administer the instrument easily. n = Z 2 pq / [e 2 ].
Whereas n = is the sample size, Z = is the Z-score (1.96) corresponding to 95% confidence level, p = is the proportion in the target population (0.5), q = 1-p, e = is the desired margin error considered to be 5%= 0.05. Given the study problem domain, the methods of data collection used were questionnaires and semistructured interviews. The combination of these methods permitted triangulation of various data sources and increased the reliability and validity of the information. The quantitative information was coded, cleaned, and entered into the computer through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16. The analysis of quantitative information was done by descriptive statistics to produce the background information of the students' respondents and prevalence rate. Additionally, other statistical analyses such as cross-tabulation, chi-square test, and symmetric measures were used to measure the significant relation between betting and variables like prevalence. Emerging themes, through interview were identified and contently paraphrased.

Results and Discussion
The study administered questionnaires and interview questions that targeted at picturing out the extent at which sports betting was taking place among students population. The responses were analyzed using the descriptive statistics to generate tables, percentage, frequencies and bar graph. The results are shown as per study objectives.

Demographic information of students' by sex, age, and class level
Table 1 presents students' respondents by sex, age, and class level in a fair distribution. In respect to age assessment, the majority of students 73.8% were under unlawful age qualification to involve themselves in betting as their age was below 18 years. This indicates the risks of having early betting involvement among school-going adolescents.

Response on the development of feelings to bet
The study pictured out the levels at which sampled students felt betting and their responses were: about 104 (29.00%) students reported to have too high feelings, 66 (18.4%) felt highly to take part in betting, whereas 91 students (25.3%) had low feelings and the 98 (27.3%) had too low feelings to bet. Cumulatively, 47.4% of the students had the too high and high betting feelings, this reflected a big number of students with positive feelings development related to betting as shown in Table 2.  and no cells had an expected count of less than 5. Therefore, this assumption was met, because the statistic test was based on a 4x2 cross-tabulation table of which the degrees of freedom (df) was df=(R−1) * (C−1)=(4−1) * (2−1)=3 while the corresponding p-value was p = 0.333. Since the cross-tabulated p-value was greater than the chosen significance level (α = 0.05), therefore the study accepts the null hypothesis and concluded that there was enough evidence to suggest betting feelings does not depend on sex. In the same vein, the study runs a symmetric measure to picture out the strength of association between betting feelings and sex. The analysis shows that the value for Phi was 0.097 and the value for Cramer's V was also 0.097. The symmetric measure shows no difference in figures presented in under Phi and Cramer's V as the strength of association for both test was found to be very weak. Therefore, the study concluded that there is no association between the development of beting feelings and sex differences. The development of betting feeling by age In determining the rate of betting feelings in respect to age groups ranging from 10-17 and 18-25 years with varied magnitude of betting feeling was assessed. The results show that, 282 (78.6%) of respondents ranging 10-18 years had more betting feeling than 77(21.4) of age groups ranging from18-25 years. In principle, a large group of secondary school students are below the age of 18 years and still groomed by government laws for protection. In respect to age, the study runs the Pearson Chi-Square row to show the association between betting feelings and age representation (used α = 0.05). The key result in the Pearson Chi-Square value test was 1.913. The footnote for such statistic pertains to the expected cell count assumption such that the expected cell counts were all greater than 5 and no cells had an expected count of less than 5. This means that, the assumption was met because the statistic test was based on a 4x2 cross-tabulation table of which the degrees of freedom (df) for such test statistic was df=(R−1) * (C−1)=(4−1) * (2−1)=3 and the corresponding p-value was p = 0.591. Since the cross-tabulated p-value was greater than the chosen significance level (α = 0.05), therefore, the study concluded that there was enough evidence to suggest that betting feelings does not depend on age.  In picturing the strength of association between betting feelings and class representation, the symmetric measure was run. The findings show that, the Phi value was 0.165 and similarly to that of Cramer's V 0.095. The symmetric measure shows a big difference in terms of figures presented in the Phi and Cramer's V for both tests of strength association. Therefore the study realized that, strength of association between the variables was very strong hence concluded that there is a great association between the development of betting feelings and class level.

The likeliness betting risks
Students' likeliness to take part in betting was assessed. They were asked to rate much, much, sometimes or not at all if to indicate likeliness of taking risks of betting. The findings reveal that, 90 (25.1%) rated very much likeliness, 85 (23.7%) much likely and 56 (15.6%) sometimes were prone to betting risks. Besides, student's frequency involvement in betting was analysed by paying attention if they had betting within the last six months, last three months earlier or daily betting. Following such involvement, they were requested to indicate preferred batting game.  Table 9 shows frequency scenario related to betting prevalence across time among secondary school students. This situation has been pictured in a small sample of 4 schools from five highlighted Tanzanian cities having a large number of betting shops including Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza, Dodoma and Tanga. Correspondingly, students were asked to identify the betting game they have ever participated in. Their responses show that, some students had

Conclusion
The finding shows that, students aged between 10-17 years were highly interested to take the risks of betting. The evidence of their interest has been reflected in the Chi-Square test which shows a strong association of students and risk taking as far as betting is concerned. It is evident that, females students are less involved in betting activities compared to males. Besides, male students spend more of their precious time 6-10 hours a day in betting compared to female students. In comparing betting feeling at class level, the findings show that the form three students ever had too high betting feelings compared to the rest of the classes while form one had too low betting feeling equated to the rest of the classes. Practically, the majority of students got involved in more than one bet among the identified games including bet-way, premier bet, sport pesa, and tatu Mzuka. In respect to betting situation among students government and the community must be vigilant to control betting activities among those underage and betting shops for society protection.