AboutAbout me

Professor Matthew Browne is a research professor at Central Queensland University, based in the Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory. He holds a PhD in psychophysiology and quantitative methodology (Griffith University, 2002) and first-class honours in behavioural science. His primary expertise is in quantitative research methods, psychometrics, and statistical and epidemiological modelling applied to health and social science.

Since 2011 he has applied these methods to the measurement of gambling-related harm. He led the research program that reframed gambling harm as a public health outcome measurable across a continuum of the population, rather than as a clinical attribute of a small group of “problem gamblers”. Its outputs include the conceptual framework and taxonomy of gambling harms (Langham et al., 2016); the burden-of-harm methodology used to estimate gambling harm in Victoria, New Zealand and Australia nationally; the Short Gambling Harm Screen and the Gambling Harms Scales (GHS-10, GHS-20, GHS-10-AO, GHS-20-AO), which are benchmarked to health-state utility and are used in government prevalence surveys in Australia and internationally; and evidence on the distribution of harm across risk categories, including the application of the prevention paradox to gambling.

He has led or co-led the design, analysis and reporting of major jurisdictional gambling prevalence and social-cost studies for the governments of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand, and for Gambling Research Australia. He advises PhD, master's and honours students in the psychology program and acts as consulting statistician across a range of disciplines.

Public engagementPodcast!!

Co-host of Decoding the Gurus with Chris Kavanagh, Associate Professor of Psychology at Rikkyo University, an educational, entertaining and lighthearted podcast that analyses public intellectuals and online influencers through a psychosocial and anthropological lens, with particular attention to how they persuade and influence.