Simone Rodda

I am an Associate Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience based in New Zealand. My work sits at the intersection of behavioural science, public health, and gambling research. I did not arrive in this field through a single defining moment, but through long-term exposure to the realities of gambling harm—how it develops, how it is experienced, and how often it remains hidden from formal systems of support.

From early in my career, I was drawn to applied questions rather than abstract theory alone. I wanted to understand what people actually do when they struggle with gambling, not only what diagnostic frameworks say they should do. That focus has shaped my work across research, treatment-adjacent projects, and academic leadership.

Working across treatment, education, and research

For more than two decades, my professional life has moved across gambling treatment, education, and research environments. This has given me a perspective that is not purely academic. I have seen how research findings are interpreted once they leave journals, how services operate under real constraints, and how individuals experience the gap between recognising a problem and seeking help.

This experience has influenced the kinds of research questions I ask. Rather than starting with prevalence or pathology, I often begin with behaviour: how people regulate their gambling, how they interpret harm, what stops them from seeking help, and what finally prompts change. These questions are not always comfortable, but they are essential if research is meant to inform practice rather than simply describe risk.

My role at Auckland University of Technology

I currently work at Auckland University of Technology, where I hold a senior academic position in psychology and neuroscience. My role combines research, supervision, and collaboration across disciplines. A significant part of my work is embedded in gambling and addiction research, particularly projects that examine harm reduction, help-seeking pathways, and intervention design.

Working in a university setting allows me to contribute to long-term research agendas while also supporting postgraduate students and early-career researchers. Supervision is an important part of my academic identity. I see it as a responsibility to help others develop methodological confidence, ethical awareness, and realistic expectations about what research can and cannot claim.

Why help-seeking matters

One of the central themes of my work is help-seeking behaviour. Many people experiencing gambling-related harm do not access formal treatment, or do so only after years of difficulty. This is not simply a matter of availability. Psychological barriers such as stigma, shame, ambivalence, and perceived self-reliance play a powerful role.

I am interested in how these barriers operate and how services can be designed to reduce them rather than reinforce them. This means paying attention to language, delivery format, and the degree of control people feel they retain when engaging with support. Research that ignores these factors risks producing interventions that look effective on paper but remain unused in practice.

Digital and brief interventions

A significant strand of my work focuses on brief and digital interventions. Online tools, remote counselling, and self-directed programs are not replacements for all forms of treatment, but they are essential options for people who will not attend face-to-face services.

My research in this area asks practical questions: What do users find acceptable? What level of guidance is needed? How do we measure success without imposing unrealistic expectations? Digital interventions challenge researchers to rethink traditional outcome measures and to recognise incremental change as meaningful progress.

Gambling harm beyond the individual

Another aspect of my research addresses the broader impact of gambling harm. Gambling rarely affects only one person. Partners, family members, and close others often experience financial stress, emotional strain, and relational conflict as a result of someone else’s gambling.

I believe it is important that research and services recognise these experiences directly, rather than treating them as secondary or indirect. Including affected others in research changes how harm is conceptualised and how support systems are designed.

Methodological approach

Methodologically, my work draws on both quantitative and qualitative approaches. I value outcome data and measurable change, but I also place strong emphasis on lived experience and narrative evidence. Understanding why an intervention works—or fails—often requires listening carefully to users rather than relying solely on numerical indicators.

Across all my research, I aim to remain cautious in interpretation. Behavioural change is complex, context-dependent, and rarely linear. Overstating certainty may make findings easier to communicate, but it ultimately undermines trust and usefulness.

My view of impact and academic responsibility

I do not measure impact solely by publication counts. Academic work has value when it informs better decisions, supports more humane services, and helps people access support earlier and with less friction. Some of the most meaningful contributions I have made are not visible in authorship lists but in supervision, collaboration, and the quiet work of improving research design.

I see my role as contributing to a research culture that values clarity, restraint, and relevance. Gambling research carries social and policy weight, and with that comes responsibility. My aim has always been to ensure that evidence is used to illuminate complexity, not to oversimplify it.

Selected Works

Institutional Affiliations and Professional Roles

How my work shifted toward longitudinal gambling research

As my role matured, I became increasingly focused on large-scale population studies—projects where the stakes are not academic novelty, but long-term public understanding. I did not set out to “become a gambling researcher” in the way people sometimes imagine. The field drew me in because gambling research exposes every weak point in applied psychology and public health: measurement is difficult, behaviour is episodic, harm is unevenly distributed, and public narratives often run ahead of the evidence.

What I learned early is that gambling data rarely reward simplistic interpretations. Participation and harm do not move in lockstep. Some people gamble frequently without obvious harm; others experience harm with comparatively modest expenditure. Life events can change risk rapidly—stress, relationship breakdown, financial shocks, or mental health strain can reconfigure a person’s behaviour in a matter of weeks. If you rely only on cross-sectional snapshots, you can mistake temporary volatility for a trend, or treat correlation as a pathway.

That is why longitudinal research matters so much to me. When you follow people over time, the questions become more honest. You stop asking only “who is harmed” and start asking “how does harm develop, persist, or reduce,” and “what changes come before improvement.” Longitudinal work forces clarity about timing, sequencing, and context. It also forces humility: patterns are rarely universal, and subgroup differences are often the most important story.

My involvement in the New Zealand National Gambling Study shaped this perspective. A longitudinal study is not just a series of reports; it is infrastructure. It depends on consistent instruments, careful definitions, retention strategies, and analytical choices that remain consequential for years. When those foundations are weak, everything built on them becomes fragile. When they are strong, the findings can inform policy without overselling certainty.

My contribution in this space has been anchored in method and interpretation. I’ve focused on how outcomes are framed, how change is identified, and how uncertainty is communicated. I’ve also tried to keep the analysis grounded in real behaviour: gambling is not a stable trait, it is a pattern of decisions made under changing circumstances. That reality has implications for how we design harm-minimisation strategies and how we evaluate what “works.”

The same discipline became even more important during COVID-19. When lockdowns disrupted land-based gambling, there was an immediate fear that online gambling would surge and drive widespread harm. The concern was understandable, but the conclusion could not be assumed. Longitudinal evidence allowed us to examine who changed behaviour, in which direction, and under what conditions. What emerged was not a single dramatic narrative, but heterogeneity—some people increased online gambling, many did not, and risk clustered around specific stressors rather than the population as a whole.

This is why I continue to see my work as structural rather than performative. My aim is to keep the research honest: make claims proportional to the data, resist overstatement, and design evidence that can support policy decisions rather than decorate them.