A much-anticipated ― and, some say, long overdue ― study of legalized gambling’s impact on Connecticut residents is two weeks away.

Mandated by legislation enacted in 2022, the study, originally due Tuesday, is now expected Aug. 15, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, who said the vendor chosen to conduct the study had asked for more time because of a delay in the “contracting process.”

The department awarded Gemini Research, of Northampton, Mass., a $1.25 million contract for the study after vetting responses to a request-for-proposals issued last October.

“We are in the middle of pulling everything together,” Rachel Volberg, president of Gemini Research, said Tuesday.

Volberg was not at liberty to discuss the study’s findings, which she said would not be immediately made available to the public. She said she expected state officials to first review the study and thereafter release it to the public “as soon as possible.”

Volberg, a research professor in the School of Public Health & Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is principal investigator for the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s ongoing study of the Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts, or SEIGMA. On its website, Gemini Research touts the SEIGMA project, begun in 2013, as “the world’s longest, best funded, and most comprehensive ongoing study of the social and economic impacts of gambling.”

According to an online biography, 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, she 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.

Volberg said the Connecticut study, like SEIGMA, focuses on gambling’s social and economic impacts as well as problem gambling. SEIGMA has analyzed the effect of Massachusetts’ casinos, including MGM Springfield, which opened in 2018.

Volberg said she was involved in gambling impact studies in Connecticut in the 1990s, and recalled that the last mandated impact study conducted in the state was completed in 2009. At the time, state law required such a study to be done at least every 10 years, a requirement that was not met.

Since 2009, legalized gambling in Connecticut has expanded to include state-run keno, sports wagering ― both online and at Foxwoods Resort Casino, Mohegan Sun and certain lottery locations ― fantasy sports and online casino gambling. Online sales of lottery tickets have been authorized.

In its request-for-proposals, DMHAS said it was seeking “qualified independent organizations and individuals ... to conduct a comprehensive study concerning the effect of legalized gambling on the citizens of this state including, but not limited to, an examination of the types of gambling activity engaged in by the public and the desirability of expanding, maintaining or reducing the amount of legalized gambling permitted by the state.”

The 2009 study, conducted by Spectrum Gaming Group, a New Jersey-based consultant, cost $685,000. The study found, among other things, that the state failed to equitably distribute its share of the casinos’ slot-machine revenues to cities and towns and uncovered a spike in the number of embezzlement cases in the state since Foxwoods’ 1992 debut.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com