Psychology dissertation wins first LGA awards for research

The winner of the 2010 Betsson awards was Michele Sammut, with a dissertation on “The Prevalence of Gambling Among University Students”,

The winning dissertation had been submitted for the Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) course at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta this year.

Sammut was awarded a cash gift of €1,500 from Betsson CEO Magnus Silfverberg.

The other two finalists for the award were Benji Briffa, with a dissertation on “Remote Gaming in Malta – An Evaluation of the Tax Implications Involved” and George Gauci with a dissertation on “Remote Processing of an Interactive Application”

During the final, the winner was chosen “on his ability to best convince the panel of international industry experts, including professionals from the social, IT and financial fields, of their dissertation's applicability and relevance to gaming”, an LGA statement explained.

The award, which was supported by the LGA, the University of Malta, and the university students’ council (KSU) was created “with the notion of rewarding the student whose dissertation included findings that are most credible and are most likely to be applied to the gaming industry and society at large”.

The scope of the award was “to promote concepts of responsible gaming, innovative technical ideas for gaming, research on the commercial models adopted by gaming operators, and legal, social and psychological assessments of the gaming,” the LGA added.

The academic standards of the submitted dissertations were reviewed by “panels of independent experts” and the top three finalists were forwarded to participate in the next step of the award competition.

Addressing the award ceremony, LGA CEO Reuben Portanier said that the LGA supported “all those initiatives that promote research, innovation and responsible gaming”.

Anton Bartolo on behalf of the UOM highlighted that this award was “one of a series of industry to academia initiatives spearheaded by the University”.

While presenting the certificates to the three finalists, Silfverberg congratulated them “for the high quality research they performed”.

He further congratulated the winner “for portraying a well-studied research on problem gambling which”, he said, “is an important subject in view of responsible gaming, a subject which is very much at heart to Betsson”.