Creating and Optimizing Mindfulness Measures to Enhance and Normalize Clinical Evaluation

The investigators will use Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) methodologies to construct improved self-report mindfulness-related measures. They will also use PROMIS-based PROsetta Stone® instrument linking methods to equate scores and create cross-walks between new mindfulness measures and existing ones. The research team has extensive experience in patient reported outcomes (PRO) development through PROMIS and related PRO development initiatives, including mind-body measures (Chicago and Pittsburgh), PROsetta Stone linking methodologies (Chicago), and mindfulness research (Pittsburgh and Chicago).

PROMIS methodologies involve a systematic and iterative approach to person-centered measurement and are the gold standard. Following PROMIS methods, newly created mindfulness measures will be informed by: 1) the existing literature, and 2) stakeholders such as mindfulness researchers, Buddhist and MBI teachers, and new and experienced meditators. COMMENCE analyses will also reflect PROMIS, producing concise, precise, clinically relevant measures that can be administered as Computerized Adaptive Tests (CATs) or fixed-length short forms. PROsetta Stone methods will enable a crosswalk between the new mindfulness measures and legacy instruments that assess similar constructs. All of this will have a major impact on mindfulness research through increasing measurement precision and comparability across and between studies: past, present, and future. The project will also address the response shift challenge. New mindfulness measures and crosswalk linking will be produced through the following three SPECIFIC AIMS:

SPECIFIC AIM I. Development of New Mindfulness Item Banks. Activities include: 1) a review of the mindfulness measurement literature; 2) an online survey of mindfulness researchers to identify domains and measurement considerations for item bank development; 3) focus groups with new and experienced meditators, and individual interviews with mindfulness meditation practitioners, including Buddhist teachers, to elaborate on concepts such as response shift; 4) item refinement; 6) translatability review; and 7) cognitive interviews to assess item clarity.

SPECIFIC AIM II. Calibration of New Mindfulness Item Banks and Score Linking with Legacy Measures. Calibration activities will include: 1) testing new mindfulness item banks in a large online general population sample (n=4200) and a sample of mindfulness teachers and students (n=500); 2) evaluation of dimensionality and other assumptions prior to Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis; 3) IRT analyses; and 4) creation of CATs and fixed length short forms. A battery of legacy measures will also be administrated alongside new mindfulness banks. Using PROsetta Stone procedures, the investigators will test mindfulness banks and legacy measures in a new large online sample (n=3000) to link measures on a common measurement metric and create cross-walk scoring tables to facilitate interpretation.

SPECIFIC AIM III. Validation of New Mindfulness Short Forms in Ongoing Mindfulness Courses. To evaluate different forms of validity (e.g., construct, criterion), responsiveness to change over time, and estimation of minimally important differences, the investigators will administer new mindfulness short forms and legacy measures to 250 mindfulness students at baseline, 8-weeks, and 16 weeks in multiple, on-going 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses and similar MBI programs at Pittsburgh and Chicago sites, as well as at member sites from the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health and the BraveNet Practice-Based Research Network. In addition to legacy measures, a subset of the sample will complete the meditation breath awareness score, an experiential measure of focused attention.

Inclusion criteria

• Must be at least 18 years of age
• Must be able to speak and understand English
• Must be enrolled in an multi-week, group-based, instructor-led, live (in-person or online) mindfulness-based program that has not yet started (i.e., before session 1)

Exclusion criteria

• Unable to provide consent