Comments on the Impact of a Yoga and Meditation Intervention on Students

Abstract

published the results of a pilot study in a 2019 issue of the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. 1 They developed a promising six-week dual intervention involving yoga and meditation for college students (one session per week). One group of students was recruited (n517) and their levels of perceived stress, anxiety, and mindfulness skills were assessed before and after the sixweek intervention. We commend the authors for creating a promising tool to tackle the often put aside issue of student psychological distress. Nevertheless, we question and comment on the pilot study methodology used by the authors, the procedure used to assess the stated objectives, and the interpretation of the results.Pilot studies are feasibility studies, meaning that they are conducted to assess the quality of the studied intervention and the smooth running of the study procedures before conducting a large-scale study. 2 Therefore, pilot studies only require a small sample and the collected data should not be interpreted per se. 2 The strength of a pilot study rests in the rigorous description of the procedure employed to conduct the assessment of an intervention (ie, methodology, procedure, intervention, quality, and feasibility assessments). Such description allows other researchers to replicate the study to further support the assessed intervention as evidencebased. In their pilot study, Lemay, Hoolahan, and Buchanan aimed to assess the efficacy of their dual intervention on reducing perceived stress and anxiety, as well as increasing mindfulness skills in college students. As is required in a pilot study, the authors clearly reported their methodology, that is, their inclusion and exclusion criteria, how they recruited participants, and the measures used in their assessment. They also used robust and psychometrically sound self-report measures to assess the levels of stress, anxiety, and mindfulness skills among their participants.A key element of pilot studies was missing in this article. The authors asserted that their dual intervention was of high quality. However, their intervention lacked detailing (ie, yoga postures, meditation scenarios, room disposition, instructions technique used) and the authors did not report how they assessed the quality of their intervention, nor did they state how they evaluated the feasibility of their study procedures. Indeed, they