scholarly journals Common Factors Underlying the Five Facets of Mindfulness and Proposed Mechanisms: a Psychometric Study Among Meditators and Non-meditators

Mindfulness ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2804-2817
Author(s):  
Kathrin Bednar ◽  
Martin Voracek ◽  
Ulrich S. Tran

Abstract Objectives This study investigated whether common factors underlie the established mindfulness facets, as assessed by the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and some of the mechanisms, which have been previously proposed to explain the beneficial effects of mindfulness on mental health. Methods Multigroup exploratory structural equation models (ESEM) were fitted to samples of non-meditators and meditators (total N = 3265) to (1) identify the number of factors that underlie the facets and mechanisms of mindfulness, (2) establish measurement invariance, and (3) conduct path analyses to determine the associations of extracted factors with psychological symptoms. Results Five measurement-invariant common factors were found to underlie the mechanisms and facets of mindfulness. The FFMQ facets loaded distinctly, but none of them highest, on these common factors. The common factors represented different ways of focusing, dealing with distress, and relating towards one’s own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and body sensations. Three of the common factors appeared to specifically reflect meditation experience. The FFMQ facets accounted for less variance of depression, anxiety, somatization, and stress scores than marker scales of the five common factors, all of which derived from the proposed mechanisms. Conclusions The common factors appear to be elements of the supporting mechanisms and psychological faculties of mindfulness. Their existence may explain the mutual interrelations between mechanisms and self-reported mindfulness but also suggests that self-reported mindfulness may not be factorially distinct from its assumed mechanisms. Longitudinal studies as well as behavioral data are needed to probe the generalizability and causality of these psychometric results.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S267-S267
Author(s):  
Scott E Moore ◽  
Kelly Wierenga ◽  
Heather K Hardin

Abstract Stress and symptomatology have been shown to have strong relationships to health outcomes in older adults. More specifically, perceived social stressors (PSS), whether related to disease, disability or demographics, is a contributor to health. Recently it was reported that intra-individual symptom variability (ISV) may predict poor health outcomes better than symptom severity in some chronic illnesses. Individual and combined influences of ISV and PSS on health behaviors are not fully described. Using a subset (n = 518, 46.5% men; mean age = 48.7) of MIDUS Refresher participants’ 8 day daily diary data, we sought to determine the influences of physical and psychological ISV and PSS on independent and basic activities of daily living (iADLs, bADLs). The ISVs represent an average of day-to-day variation across each of the 22 physical and 27 psychological symptoms for each participant. Psychological ISV, physical ISV, PSS, and total number of chronic conditions were entered into two structural equation models as predictors for each ADL outcome (p<.01). The models depicted both direct and indirect influences of psychological ISV on ADLs (iADLs: B=-.43, P < .001; B = .51, P < .001 [through PSS]; bADLs: B=-.45, P < .001; B = .51, P < .001 [through PSS]). However, the influence of physical ISV on ADLs was indirect (B = .22, P = .001 [through PSS]). Individual-level influences of ISV and PSS on ADLs may better aide healthcare providers’ identifying and intervening to disrupt poor health outcomes for those at risk.


Assessment ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 107319111988096
Author(s):  
Dirk H. M. Pelt ◽  
Dimitri Van der Linden ◽  
Curtis S. Dunkel ◽  
Marise Ph. Born

Socially desirable responding may affect the factor structure of personality questionnaires and may be one of the reasons for the common variance among personality traits. In this study, we test this hypothesis by investigating the influence of the motivational test-taking context (development vs. selection) and the opportunity to distort responses (forced-choice vs. Likert response format) on personality questionnaire scores. Data from real selection and assessment candidates (total N = 3,980) matched on gender, age, and educational level were used. Mean score differences were found between the selection and development groups, with smaller differences for the FC version. Yet, exploratory structural equation models showed that the overall factor structures as well as the general factor were highly similar across the four groups. Thus, although socially desirable responding may affect mean scores on personality traits, it does not appear to affect factor structures. This study further suggests that the common variance in personality questionnaires is consistent and appears to be little influenced by motivational pressures for response distortion.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 838-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne M. Jones ◽  
Graham D. Bodie ◽  
Sam D. Hughes

Mindfulness has emerged as an important factor that assists people in regulating difficult emotions, but it is not yet known whether mindfulness plays a role in supportive communication. The current study examines whether mindfulness facets (describing, observing, nonjudging, aware acting, nonreacting) positively influence self-reported abilities to (a) discern more and less person-centered (PC) supportive messages and (b) facilitate reappraisals via two core cognitive factors, namely, empathy and active listening. College students with little or no meditation experience ( N = 183) completed an online survey. Mediation analyses showed that empathy and active listening partially mediated the relationship between two mindfulness facets (describing, observing) and the two perceptual outcome measures (PC message discriminations, facilitating reappraisals) by accounting for 33% and 62% of the variance. Additional structural equation modeling suggested that mindful observing and describing positively predicted empathy and active listening. Both mindful describing and nonjudging also positively predicted facilitating reappraisals. Interestingly, nonjudging negatively predicted empathy and active listening. The results point to mindfulness as an important factor that influences cognitive-affective processes in supportive communication.


1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claes Fornell ◽  
Fred L. Bookstein

In marketing applications of structural equation models with unobservable variables, researchers have relied almost exclusively on LISREL for parameter estimation. Apparently they have been little concerned about the frequent inability of marketing data to meet the requirements for maximum likelihood estimation or the common occurrence of improper solutions in LISREL modeling. The authors demonstrate that partial least squares (PLS) can be used to overcome these two problems. PLS is somewhat less well-grounded than LISREL in traditional statistical and psychometric theory. The authors show, however, that under certain model specifications the two methods produce the same results. In more general cases, the methods provide results which diverge in certain systematic ways. These differences are analyzed and explained in terms of the underlying objectives of each method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 8803
Author(s):  
Francesco Pace ◽  
Emanuela Ingusci ◽  
Fulvio Signore ◽  
Giulia Sciotto

Human Resource Management (HRM) processes are considered the beating heart of any successful organization. Recently, several studies have highlighted how organizations can use commitment-oriented HR practices to generate organizational and individual effectiveness. The aim of this study was to verify whether the perception of HRM practices could be able to elicit extra-role behaviors and, at the same time, whether this relationship could be mediated by employability and learning conditions. The analyses were carried out on a sample of 1219 Italian workers using Structural Equation Models. The structural model yielded good fit indices and the results showed a significant and positive effect of the perception of HRM practices on both employability and learning. However, the perception of HRM practices is not directly associated with extra-role behaviors, but only through the effect of both mediators (full mediation). Practical implications about the importance of creating working conditions that are adequately oriented to the development of individual skills in order to produce indirect beneficial effects on the organization are discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 521-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nelson Jones ◽  
Aurelio Jose Figueredo

The Dark Triad consists of three overlapping but distinct personality variables: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. To date, however, no research has empirically identified what leads these three variables to overlap or whether other variables share the same core. The present research addresses why and how dark personalities overlap. Drawing from classic work in psychopathy, Hare's Factor 1 or manipulation and callousness were found to be the common antagonistic core. A series of latent variable procedures, including Multisample Structural Equation Models, revealed that for both samples, manipulation and callousness, completely accounted for the associations among the facet scores of the psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism scales. Sample 2 also included Social Dominance Orientation, and results further confirmed that Social Dominance Orientation has the same common core as the Dark Triad. In sum, Hare's Factor 1—manipulation–callousness—emerged as common dark core that accounts for the overlap among antagonistic traits. Copyright © 2012 European Association of Personality Psychology


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Castro-Alvarez ◽  
Jorge Tendeiro ◽  
Rob Meijer ◽  
Laura Francina Bringmann

Traditionally, researchers have used time series and multilevel models to analyze intensive longitudinal data. However, these models do not directly address traits and states which conceptualize the stability and variability implicit in longitudinal research, and they do not explicitly take into account measurement error. An alternative to overcome these drawbacks is to consider structural equation models (state-trait SEMs) for longitudinal data that represent traits and states as latent variables. Most of these models are encompassed in the Latent State-Trait (LST) theory. These state-trait SEMs can be problematic when the number of measurement occasions increases. As they require the data to be in wide format, these models quickly become overparameterized and lead to non-convergence issues. For these reasons, multilevel versions of state-trait SEMs have been proposed, which require the data in long format. To study how suitable state-trait SEMs are for intensive longitudinal data, we carried out a simulation study. We compared the traditional single level to the multilevel version of three state-trait SEMs. The selected models were the multistate-singletrait (MSST) model, the common and unique trait-state (CUTS) model, and the trait-state-occasion (TSO) model. Furthermore, we also included an empirical application. Our results indicated that the TSO model performed best in both the simulated and the empirical data. To conclude, we highlight the usefulness of state-trait SEMs to study the psychometric properties of the questionnaires used in intensive longitudinal data. Yet, these models still have multiple limitations, some of which might be overcome by extending them to more general frameworks.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Diehl ◽  
Craig Anthony Rodriguez-Seijas ◽  
Justine S. Thompson ◽  
Kristy Dalrymple ◽  
Iwona Chelminski ◽  
...  

Recent studies of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and its condensed version (FFMQ-SF) fail to replicate the initially proposed 5-factor structure in clinical samples. Failure to adequately understand the dimensionality of common mindfulness measures within clinical samples, therefore, represents an important gap in the current literature. The increasing popularity of mindfulness-based interventions warrants further investigation of differential associations between facets of mindfulness and different forms of psychopathology. We examined (1) the underlying structure of the FFMQ and FFMQ-SF and (2) associations between FFMQ and FFMQ-SF facets and dimensions of psychopathology (i.e. internalizing and substance use disorders) in two large clinical samples (N = 2,779). Results from bass-ackwards analyses suggested similarly defensible 5- and 6-factor models solutions in terms of fit. The 5-factor model was optimal when factoring in parsimony. Exploratory structural equation modeling revealed that all FFMQ facets with the exception of observe were negatively associated with the internalizing factor. Associations with substance use disorders were more complex. In both samples, 5-factor FFMQ and FFMQ-SF models were determined to best represent these data. While deficits in all FFMQ facets with the exception of observe correspond with lower internalizing psychopathology, a more nuanced association was observed with substance use disorders.


2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Barbaranelli ◽  
Gian Vittorio Caprara

Summary: The aim of the study is to assess the construct validity of two different measures of the Big Five, matching two “response modes” (phrase-questionnaire and list of adjectives) and two sources of information or raters (self-report and other ratings). Two-hundred subjects, equally divided in males and females, were administered the self-report versions of the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ) and the Big Five Observer (BFO), a list of bipolar pairs of adjectives ( Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Borgogni, 1993 , 1994 ). Every subject was rated by six acquaintances, then aggregated by means of the same instruments used for the self-report, but worded in a third-person format. The multitrait-multimethod matrix derived from these measures was then analyzed via Structural Equation Models according to the criteria proposed by Widaman (1985) , Marsh (1989) , and Bagozzi (1994) . In particular, four different models were compared. While the global fit indexes of the models were only moderate, convergent and discriminant validities were clearly supported, and method and error variance were moderate or low.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Borgogni ◽  
Silvia Dello Russo ◽  
Laura Petitta ◽  
Gary P. Latham

Employees (N = 170) of a City Hall in Italy were administered a questionnaire measuring collective efficacy (CE), perceptions of context (PoC), and organizational commitment (OC). Two facets of collective efficacy were identified, namely group and organizational. Structural equation models revealed that perceptions of top management display a stronger relationship with organizational collective efficacy, whereas employees’ perceptions of their colleagues and their direct superior are related to collective efficacy at the group level. Group collective efficacy had a stronger relationship with affective organizational commitment than did organizational collective efficacy. The theoretical significance of this study is in showing that CE is two-dimensional rather than unidimensional. The practical significance of this finding is that the PoC model provides a framework that public sector managers can use to increase the efficacy of the organization as a whole as well as the individual groups that compose it.


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