Previous research among experienced meditators suggests that the associations of trait mindfulness with mental health are mediated by emotion regulation, body awareness, and a less static perspective of the self. The present study sought to elucidate whether this mediational model is also applicable to the general population and whether further potential mechanisms of action need to be included. Meditators and nonmeditators differ in overall mindfulness levels, but also in the structural properties of mindfulness facets. Meditation experience might bring about a change of variables that explain the associations of mindfulness with mental health. We examined the confirmatory fit of the mediational model in a large, German-speaking general population sample (N = 1133) with structural equation modeling, and investigated in an exploratory fashion whether further mediating variables needed to be included in the model. As a side goal, the structural properties of a short form of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) were re-examined. Results suggest that variables and mechanisms which mediate the associations between trait mindfulness and mental health are the same for meditators and the general population. Differences pertain to the strength and direction of some of these associations. The short-form FFMQ is recommended for further research. It was replicably shown to have a two-factor higher-order structure. Findings are discussed with regard to mindfulness training and intervention. Potential mechanisms of action may not be intervention-specific, but may also explain the links between trait mindfulness and mental health.

Meta-analyses suggest that mindfulness interventions have positive effects on mental health. Yet, how mindfulness interventions exert their effects is still largely unknown. Self-reported mindfulness may partially mediate the association between mindfulness interventions and change in self-reported mental health. We present the results of a novel application of three-level meta-analysis on the pre-post intervention data of 146 RCTs of mindfulness interventions (total N = 10,979), probing the efficacy of a broad range of mindfulness interventions and meditation training against active, treatment-as-usual (TAU), and wait-list control groups. We found that self-reported mindfulness not only increased in mindfulness interventions (d = 0.54, 95% CI [0.47, 0.61]), but also in active (nonmindfulness) controls (d = 0.27 [0.18, 0.36]) and wait-list controls (d = 0.10 [0.04, 0.17]; but not TAU controls: d = 0.04 [−0.03, 0.12]). In addition, change in mindfulness accounted for change in self-reported mental health (mindfulness interventions: d = 0.65 [0.57, 0.73]; active controls: d = 0.49 [0.36, 0.62]; TAU controls: d = 0.20 [0.12, 0.29]; wait-list controls: d = 0.22 [0.14, 0.30]) in all treatment and control groups alike. Thus, self-reported mindfulness apparently is no unique mediator of mindfulness interventions. It may either be more universal, merely a correlate of self-reported mental health, or both. Research should focus on the common denominator of mindfulness interventions and clinically relevant constructs with which self-reported mindfulness shares some of its characteristics. Limitations pertain to the indirect evidence of the three-level meta-analytic approach, the self-report nature of the data, and small-study effects, which suggest the presence of publication bias. The risk of bias may have led to the overestimation of effects and results could further be subjected to effects of shared method variance. Public Significance StatementThis meta-analysis suggests that increases in self-reported mindfulness may explain the treatment efficacy of various mindfulness-based interventions, but also of nonmindfulness-based controls. Selfreported mindfulness thus may be no unique mediator of the effects of mindfulness interventions. The current evidence leaves open whether self-reported mindfulness might be a universal mediator of treatment effects, merely reflects changes of self-reported mental health in general, or both.

Background: Over the last decades, mindfulness has become an important concept and topic for many professions and interventional research. While the number of available self-report scales and empirical studies on the concept of mindfulness has increased in recent years, some questions regarding its theoretical underpinnings still remain. Objective: The goal of this systematic review and qualitative synthesis was to investigate the distinction of cultivated and dispositional mindfulness. We focused on research with the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) as it is both comprehensive (building on and incorporating other important mindfulness scales) and widely used. Data Sources: Journal articles and dissertations listed in Google Scholar, ProQuest, Scopus, Web of Science, and World Cat from January 2006 until January 2020. Review Methods: 172 studies were identified and systematically analyzed in a two-step iterative qualitative coding framework with three main categories of interest: FFMQ and its facets, dispositional mindfulness, cultivated mindfulness. Results: We offer a broad summary of the extant literature on the concepts of dispositional and cultivated mindfulness in terms of their definition, the practice of mindfulness, their state and trait aspects, and their assessment with self-report scales. Based on this evidence, inference on cultivated and dispositional aspects in the individual FFMQ facets is also presented and discussed. Conclusion: Mindfulness cultivation is a process induced by mindfulness practice. Dispositional mindfulness functions as a baseline for this process. We argue that each FFMQ facet mixes cultivation and disposition, which might limit their usability in intervention studies or when comparing meditators and non-meditators. Future research should pay more attention on the cultivated and dispositional aspects of mindfulness, for which we offer venues and recommendations.

Although the evaluation of inter-rater agreement is often necessary in psychometric procedures (e.g., standard settings or assessment centers), the measures typically used are not unproblematic. Existing measures are known for penalizing raters in specific settings, and some of them are highly dependent on the marginals and should not be used in ranking settings. This article introduces a new approach using the probability of consistencies in a setting where n independent raters rank k items. The discrete theoretical probability distribution of the sum of the pairwise absolute row differences (PARDs) is used to evaluate inter-rater agreement of empirically retrieved rating results. This is done by calculating the sum of PARDs in an empirically obtained $$n\times k$$ n × k matrix together with the theoretically expected distribution of the sum of PARDs assuming raters randomly ranking items. In this article, the theoretical considerations of the PARDs approach are presented and two first simulation studies are used to investigate the performance of the approach.