Mindfulness in Thailand and the United States: a case of apples versus oranges?

Full Abstract

The study and practice of mindfulness is rapidly expanding in Western psychology. Recently developed self-report measures of mindfulness were derived from Western operationalizations and cross-cultural validation of many of these measures is lacking, particularly in Buddhist cultures. Therefore, this study examined the measurement equivalence of the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS) and Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) among Thai (n=385) and American (n=365) college students. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis models fit to the data revealed that the KIMS lacked configural invariance across groups, which precluded subsequent invariance tests, and although the MAAS demonstrated configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance, there was no significant latent mean MAAS difference between Thais and Americans. These findings suggest that Eastern and Western conceptualizations of mindfulness may have important differences. Copyright 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Author information

Author/s: Christopher, Michael S (MS); Charoensuk, Sukjai (S); Gilbert, Brennan D (BD); Neary, Timothy J (TJ); Pearce, Kelly L (KL);

Affiliation: Pacific University, Portland, OR 97205, USA. mchristopher(-atsign-)pacificu.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Journal of clinical psychology (J Clin Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Jun; vol 65 (issue 6) : pp 590-612

Dates: Created 2009/04/29; Completed 2009/06/08;

PMID: 19358288, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/8/2009, IMS Date: 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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