The Turkish Version of Mindful Attention Awareness Scale: Preliminary Findings

Abstract

The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) is the most frequently utilized self-report measure of mindfulness. The present study sought to investigate the psychometric properties of MAAS among non-clinical Turkish participants as well as to explore the relationships between mindfulness and well-being, experiential avoidance, cognitive reappraisal, and impulsivity. One hundred participants from two samples were recruited for the study. After the translation of MAAS into Turkish, a test battery including MAAS Turkish form, a demographic information form, General Health Questionnaire, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, White Bear Suppression Inventory, and MMPI Impulsivity Subscale was administered to participants. After a 3-week interval, the second administration of MAAS was carried out in the same samples. Cronbach's alpha method was used to determine the internal consistency and Pearson correlation was utilized to assess test-retest reliability of the scale while factor analysis was employed to investigate the internal structure of the scale. The relations between mindfulness and convergent measures were examined using Pearson correlation. The study provided preliminary results indicating that the Turkish version of MAAS possesses good psychometric qualities. The single factor structure of the original scale was confirmed. Significant relationships in the expected directions were found between mindfulness and well-being, experiential avoidance, and impulsivity. The Turkish version of MAAS is an internally consistent and temporally reliable assessment tool for measuring mindfulness in Turkish population.

The Estonian Mindful Attention Awareness Scale: Assessing Mindfulness Without a Distinct Linguistic Present Tense

“…Parallel to findings for the original MAAS (Brown and Ryan 2003) and other translations of the scale (Deng et al 2012;Catak 2012;Jermann et al 2009), no gender differences in scale scores were found. The present study also found no differences in scale scores among adult students at several levels of education, suggesting that the Estonian MAAS may be used among a variety of adult normative populations.…”

“…These subjective well-being indicators have similarly been used to assess the validity of the MAAS in other translations of the MAAS, such as the Turkish (Catak 2012) and Greek versions (Mantzios et al 2013). The variables associated with mindfulness in the present study represent important domains of personal and interpersonal wellbeing.…”

“…Another explanation pertains to Estonia's unique grammar of time. The test-retest scores for languages similar to English have been high: 0.82 (Soler et al 2012) and 0.90 (Cebolla et al 2013) for the Spanish versions; 0.83 for the Turkish version by Catak (2012); and 0.97 (Mantzios et al 2013) for the Greek version. However, test-retest scores for another language without a distinctive present tense, namely Chinese, were 0.54 (Deng et al 2012) and between 0.35 and 0.52 (Black et al 2012).…”

An assessment of mindfulness intervention as a regular subject in Ecuadorian higher education

“…However, their findings showed that neither the frequency of informal nor formal meditation practice was predictive of neither post course individual subscales nor total FFMQ score and the entire duration of formal meditation practice did not significantly predict post course FFMQ subscales or total scores. Catak (2012) investigated the psychometric properties of the MAAS in the Turkish population and explored the relationships of mindfulness with other related psychological constructs. His results showed that the Turkish version of MAAS possesses good psychometric qualities and good internal consistency.…”

The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) in an Argentine Population

“…1 CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas), Mar del Plata, Argentina 2 Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Mar del Plata, Argentina recently, Turkey (Catak, 2012) and China (Deng et al, 2012). It has also been adapted for use with adolescents (Brown et al, 2011;de Bruin, Zijlstra, de Weijer-Bergsma, & Bögels, 2011) and psychiatric patients (Jermann et al, 2009).…”