Dr. Rachel Volberg has been involved in epidemiological research on gambling and problem gambling since 1985 and has directed or consulted on numerous gambling studies throughout the world. In 1988, Dr. Volberg was the first investigator to receive funding from the (U.S.) National Institutes of Health to study the prevalence of problem gambling in the general population. Dr. Volberg is currently the Principal Investigator on the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts (SEIGMA) study. In addition to her work in Massachusetts, Dr. Volberg is working on two projects in Canada to assess the impacts of the introduction of online gambling and to identify best practices in population assessments of problem gambling. She is also a member of research teams in Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden conducting large-scale longitudinal studies to identify predictors of transitions into and out of gambling and problem gambling.
Dr. Volberg has published extensively, presented at national and international conferences, and testified before legislative committees in states and provinces throughout North America. She sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Gambling Studies, International Gambling Studies and the Journal of Gambling Issues and is a longtime member of the American Sociological Association and the (U.S.) National Council on Problem Gambling. Dr. Volberg holds appointments at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.