The goal of this study is to examine the trends in research related to gambling in Korea, and provide
directions for future research. A total of 335 studies from 1988 to June, 2016 were extracted from
domestic and international Master's and Ph.D. theses, academic journals, conference, and research reports
using six search engines, and the trends of the research in this topic were analyzed. The study drew a
number of conclusions following the analysis. First, the number of studies regarding gambling has rapidly
increased since 2003, and more of them were focused on quantitative studies. Second, there were
substantially more studies on the members of general public than addicts as many were focused on both
men and women, college students and adulthood. Third, most quantitative studies set gambling addiction
as a variable, and correlation analysis and regression analysis were the most frequently conducted analysis
methods. Many of qualitative studies focused on addiction and the recovery process, and most frequently
performed phenomenological analysis to derive the results. Fourth, the most frequently used gambling
screening scale was CPGI. Fifth, the most frequent personal variables most frequently linked to gambling
were depression and anxiety, the most common environmental variables were gambling habits and problems
of parents, and gambling accessibility; variables related to gambling itself were motive and irrational faith
in gambling. Based on these results, suggestions were made for future research; limitations of this study
are also discussed.