تابع مورد افتراقی در سراسر مراقبه گر و غیرمراقبه گر هادر پرسشنامه ذهن آگاهی بعد رده پنج گانه

Mindfulness has been defined as a state of consciousness involving intentional attention and awareness of the present moment. Reporting on past conscious experience is inherently tricky and presents unique challenges to the assessment of mindfulness. Mindfulness-present and mindfulness-absent items may represent different aspects of the construct to different populations resulting from differential skill in assessing sustained or lapsed conscious attention. The current study shows that an online sample of meditators and non-meditators with similar overall levels of mindfulness differentially endorse response options for positively and negatively worded items. While meditators endorse mindfulness-present and mindfulness-absent items with nearly equivalent frequency, student non-meditators are much more likely to reject mindfulness-absent items than to accept mindfulness-present items. The differential item functioning between these two groups represents a potential problem regarding construct validity when comparing meditators to non-meditators and when assessing mindfulness as a pre-post measure with meditation practice.

While meditators scored higher than non-meditators, supporting the validity of the FFMQ, the functionality of the items was different across these two groups. Non-meditators showed a significant difference between items that ask about mindfulness and those that ask about the absence of mindfulness; meditators did not. These results raise an important question: Does the absence of the opposite of a quality indicate its presence? The presence of qualities negatively related to mindfulness may help identify whether or not mindfulness could be present, but may do little to indicate whether it is present. Considerations of mindfulness-present and mindfulness absent items require careful attention in studies using self-report methods to measure mindfulness. The fact that DTF is present may suggest that self-report indices of mindfulness may not be appropriate for comparisons of meditators and non-meditators nor for pre-post measures following meditation practice. Even within populations, there may be limitations to self-report of such a complex construct associated with inherent difficulties in measurement (see Grossman, 2008 and Schooler, 2002). Meditators, as volunteers, may attempt to be more objective and accepting of their self-representation (e.g., the “good subject”, Rosnow, 2002), paradoxically something that their meditative practice may instruct them to value (Grossman, 2008). Separating demand characteristics relative to ability represents an epistemological problem for assessing mindfulness in meditators. More evaluation of the qualitative aspects associated with mindfulness practice, changes in meta-consciousness, and careful examination of the numerous facets typically associated with the traditional Buddhist notion of mindfulness could prove useful in converging upon ways of tapping the construct while limiting bias.