Dr. Nigel E. Turner is a scientist with the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). He is also an assistant professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Turner has a PhD in psychology from the University of Western Ontario.
Areas of Research
Dr. Nigel E. Turner is a well-published researcher in the field of gambling studies. He has extensive experience in a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods including experiments, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and content analysis.
In addition to numerous research publications and conference presentations, he has helped develop and evaluate prevention material for problem gambling (Turner, Macdonald, & Somerset, 2008). This problem gambling prevention program is available for free (see Turner, Macdonald, Ballon, Dubois, 2010).
He is one of the leading researchers in the psychology of electronic gambling machine technology and has published papers on the interface between the psychology of the player and the mathematics of the gambling technology (Turner, 2011). In this study it is shown how the electronic gambling games are designed to provide a high level of positive reinforcement in the short term which encourages continued play, but very few long-term winners.
For the past five years he has been conducting research on problem gambling amongst adult offenders (Turner, Preston, Saunders, McAvoy, & Jain, 2009). This research indicates that 10% of the correctional population in Ontario has a severe gambling problem, and another 11% has a subclinical level of gambling problems.
Publications
View Dr. Turner's publications on Google Scholar.