From the perspective of modernist science, definitions are operationalised through standardised methods or techniques and the results collected, recorded, calculated and assessed through the use of reliable and validated scales and inventories. This version of empirical validity asserts the study object and its effects can be established with verifiable, reliable, and generalisable data. Baer and her associates’ comments from 2006 are still germane: scales are designed to “capture its essence”, to discover its “nature” (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006, p. 28). The hope is that these steps will yield the sought-after mechanisms and construct credibility which will then inform and guide treatment protocols (Baer, 2007; Baer et al., 2008; D. B. Brown, Bravo, Roos, & Pearson, 2014; Dimidjian & Linehan, 2003). In the main, measurement devices are designed for adults though it is worth noting that a child and adolescent mindfulness scale (CAMM) has been trialled and extended upon (de Bruin, Zijlstra, & Bögels, 2014; Greco, Baer, & Smith, 2011).
Developed for people who are already mindfulness meditators, the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) is a 30-item unidimensional instrument which seeks to gauge a number of factors including non-evaluative present-moment attention and willingness to stay with negative mental states (Buchheld et al., 2001). The inventors claim it is the “first and validated” attempt (p. 16) to operationalise being in the present moment. A 14-item version for general settings where knowledge of Buddhist practices would be unlikely was developed later, the authors declaring to have “demonstrated that it is possible to measure mindfulness in a semantically rich and yet unequivocal way with our instrument” (Walach, Buchheld, Buttenmuller, Kleinknecht, & Schmidt, 2006, p. 1552, emphasis added).
Brown and Ryan (2003) describe the testing for scientific reliability and validly of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), an instrument which is limited to attentiveness and awareness of momentary experience in everyday life. Merging their personal experiences and understandings of mindfulness with the professional literature, the resultant scale purports to measure subjective experiences of
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mindfulness in “general terms as well as in specific day-to-day circumstances”, avoiding unusual or symbolic language (p. 825). They do not admit items that refer to attitudes, intentions, and consequences such as increased acceptance, empathy, or gratitude, choosing instead to focus on perceived present-centred attentional control. Following factor analysis which reduced an initial 184 items to a manageable 15 statements on a 6-point Likert scale, the authors undertook a number of studies with a variety of populations, investigating convergent and discriminant correlations with existing attributes of wellbeing, and whether mindfulness is associated with a greater awareness of implicit emotional health. Results indicate a significant positive correlation between mindfulness and openness to experience, emotional intelligence, and wellbeing. Through comparing the MAAS to an array of instruments they conclude that mindfulness, as they define it, “is a reliably and validly measured characteristic that has a significant role to play in a variety of aspects of mental health” (p. 844). They also surmise that “mindfulness may have influence on behaviors with societal and cultural implications including those related to drug use” (p. 844) and wonder about social surroundings that might support or deter both trait and momentary mindfulness, a passing remark sympathetic to the influence of broader contexts. The MAAS has been criticised for choosing the single factor of present moment awareness and for not including other features of mindfulness such as acceptance and insight (Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, & Laurenceau, 2007; Walach et al., 2006).
Other self-report questionnaires include the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Scale (Baer, Smith, & Allen, 2004) and a revised Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale (Feldman et al., 2007) with 39 and 12 items respectively. They focus on the areas of observing, describing, awareness or acting with awareness, present-focus, and acceptance/non-judgement. The Toronto Mindfulness Scale (TMS) is a 13-item unidimensional psychometric tool designed to assess the effects of mindfulness meditation as a state-like experience. It focuses on two factors: curiosity and decentering, the latter being a “shift from identifying personally with thoughts and feelings to relating to one’s experience in a wider field of awareness” (Lau et al., 2006, pp. 1460-1461). The authors acknowledge that a test at “a single point in time…may not reflect a respondent’s true or average capacity to evoke a state of mindfulness” and suggest that “multiple testing periods should yield an
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indication” (p. 1462, emphasis added), highlighting confidence in mindfulness being placed along a normative continuum. A trait version of the TMS was later developed (K. M. Davis, Lau, & Cairns, 2009).
After appraising the available self-report scales and efforts towards the quantification of mindfulness, Baer et al. (2006) developed a Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire which challenges the usefulness of single factor/single score or one-dimensional measurements proposed by colleagues (Buchheld et al., 2001; Feldman et al., 2007). Instead they set forth a series of analyses suggesting that five features are indispensable to a mindfulness construct: the abilities to observe and describe experiences, to act with awareness of an action, to be non-judgemental and to be nonreactive. They claim that the “most useful measures of mindfulness will be those that measure all relevant facets separately and reliably” (p. 33, emphasis added). This demonstrates the tendency in the literature to believe that a totality of experiences is not only possible to collect but essential. Paradoxically, this can be achieved by placing experience into fractioned parts. Following their study of MBCT, Kuyken and his colleagues (2010) seem to concur that it is vital to understand the elemental parts of mindfulness. They propose self-reports be triangulated with behavioural measurements and neuroscience scales, attempting to blend first-person and third-person research paradigms.
In their review comparing classical and modern variants of mindfulness, Rapgay & Bystrisky (2009) are concerned with the lack of a satisfactory operational definition, the dearth of evidence for the “mechanisms of mindfulness” and the indistinct usage of the terms attention and awareness in theory and use (p. 148). Similarly, Chiesa and Malinowski (2011) are critical of inconsistent operationalisation, the considerable perseverance required by service recipients to complete programs, and problems with methodologies such as a lack of follow-up, the dependence on self- reports, and the absence of standardised protocols. They seem to imply that continuing assessments, multiple instruments and uniform procedures will yield the actual essence of mindfulness eventually (2011). In another extensive evaluation of instruments, and relying on their personal understandings of Buddhist mind training, Grossman and Van Dam (2011) note unresolved difficulties with regard to bias, the diversity of definitions, and interpretations of experiences between meditators and
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people without considerable meditation experience. They argue self-report scales become problematic when using reverse-scored items and the authors suspect the inability of respondents to notice and remember when they have been inattentive. The iterative process of refining and reappraising self-report measures also suggests to them that “scales may take on a life of their own to define and reify mindfulness in the psychological literature” (p. 227). Bergomi and her colleagues (2013) seem to inadvertently highlight this issue with the invention of a Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness Experiences beta (CHIME-β), the title promising an all-inclusive end to these quandaries. But in concluding, mindfulness is reduced to the familiar language of a four-factor structure comprising “present awareness”, “accepting, nonreactive, and insightful orientation”, “open, non-avoidant orientation” and the “describing of experiences” (pp. 28-29, emphasis in original).
As a display of the modernist episteme, these research texts are saturated with a tenacious search for the “mechanisms of action underlying mindfulness” and the “various active ingredients in mindfulness-based interventions” (Shapiro et al., 2006, p. 374). This phrasing implies inherent elements are covered up or hidden, waiting to be discovered through the positing of correct theory, the operationalisation of true methods, and the measurement of mindfulness through valid quantitative scales. Chiesa and Malinowski (2011) give numerous instances of this quest in their critique including hopes for the “possible underlying mechanisms” of mindfulness to be discovered (p. 405), connections between “neurobiology and psychological mechanisms” (p. 405), research into the “psychological mechanisms underlying MM and MBI” (p. 416), wonderings about MBCT results and the “mechanisms underlying such changes” (p. 417), the need to “clarify psychological mechanisms underlying ACT” (p. 417), the “attempts to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying [different] mindfulness-based approaches” (p. 418), the “unlikely [probability] that mindfulness by itself can change the underlying mechanisms of psychopathology” (p. 419), and the links between “different neurobiological correlates and underlying psychological mechanisms” (p. 420). There is consternation as to whether variations in outcomes reflect “real differences” or “simply reflect the interest of researchers” (p. 419, emphasis added), as if personal research choices are not continuously being made through an intricate web of interactions and are having effects on the matter studied. A systematic review of
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MBCT for recurrent major depressive disorder concludes that understanding “specific mechanisms…is still in its early stages” and “more rigorous designs” will identify causality (van der Velden et al., 2015, p. 37), a characteristic conclusion for authors favouring systematic reductionism.
Brown et al. (2007) at least acknowledge the influence of various viewpoints when they state “different clinical approaches can spawn different definitions and operationalizations of the construct that accord with their particular treatment perspectives and with the outcomes they seek to foster” (p. 215, emphasis added). Likewise, Sauer et al. (2013) assert that choosing a scale is related to the research questions created and the intentions of the researcher, concluding that the “very essence of mindfulness will always be associated with subjective phenomenal states that cannot be reduced to their neuronal, psychological, and physiological correlates” (p. 13), the choice of the word “essence” giving away the authors’ metaphysical premise.
Overall the literature is replete with these methodological postures which, when applied to mental and physical phenomena for the purposes of measurement-making by third-person observers, aim to give a reassuringly independent, lucid, and precise view of mindfulness. The greater the consistency of responses and the more convincing the rationale of the evidence collected, the more forceful will be the truth-claims. A strong posture from this place asserts that investigators and their measurement activities have a minor effect, or no effect at all, on the phenomena being assessed and all people involved are impervious to social context and culture. Taking a moderate stance, researchers aim to be “as free as possible of bias and prejudice in their collection and interpretation of empirical data” (Wallace, 2000, p. 22). Either way, though not always explicit, there is a conviction that a veiled genuine mindfulness can be calculated precisely, it is just that science has yet to discover accurate definitions and proper instruments of measurement.
From a social constructionist view, respondents in any research project step into a priori histories that ground and sway the knowledges eventually claimed. This view questions whether a hypothetical natural essence can be impartially known via respondents’ language especially when they are required to complete predetermined
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expert-generated quantitative behavioural inventories and segmented qualitative scales. The reporting conditions oblige people to filter and reduce comments from their already selectively remembered subjective experiences to fit purportedly normative developments of mindfulness. These preset linguistic conditions with assertions of objectivity and truthfulness are seemingly designed to eliminate any uncertainties of what might be, or might not be, considered genuine mindfulness and to gauge its extent. However, such definitions and their operational procedures may become “self-referential, reductionist, and dismissive of other communities of interest” with “the potential ultimately to limit and direct the language and pedagogical practice of professionals teaching mindfulness” (McCown et al., 2010, p. 64). As they are conversational correlations, it is debatable whether any authorised accurate inventory with named facets or components will produce a definite objective structure that underlies mindfulness’s appearances and reveals its psychological realities. Every report is relative to the means of observation and the observer’s viewpoint. From this place, language cannot be a transparent mediator of internal mental conditions but a communicative sign that shapes what is being described in the telling.