Exploring the Relationship Between Subjective Ratings of Mindfulness Practices and Outcomes in Patients Participating in an MBSR Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: The present study explored relationships between outcomes of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program and the importance attributed by patients to the mindfulness practices taught.Methods: Patients with chronic illnesses (46.8% breast cancer; N=126) completed questionnaires pertaining to medical symptoms, stress, and mindfulness, pre- and post-MBSR. At program completion, each patient rated the importance of the mindfulness practices employed. Stepwise linear regression analyses were run to investigate associations between changes in outcome variables and subjective ratings of practice importance.Results: Increases in mindfulness were associated with high ratings of importance for sitting meditation (p LT 0.02) and homework manual (p LT 0.02; Adjusted R2 = 0.10). Decreases in medical symptoms were associated with high ratings for the body scan (p LT 0.01) and small group exercises (p LT 0.01; Adjusted R2 = 0.13). High ratings for the body scan were moderately, albeit significantly, correlated with decreases in perceived stress (p LT 0.01, Adjusted R2 = 0.05). A cluster analysis performed on all 10 of the ratings of practice importance showed that greater importance was associated with better outcomes for all three dependent variables (p LT 0.01). A qualitative examination of patients’ answers to open-ended questions revealed that incorporating mindfulness practices in daily life was a central component of the lifestyle changes experienced during the course of the program.Conclusions: Understanding the mechanisms underlying MBSR’s effectiveness is important as this program becomes recognized as an empirically-supported intervention. These results suggest that specific types of practice (concentration vs. the body scan) are related to distinct outcomes (dispositional mindfulness vs. medical symptoms, respectively). Overall, awareness of the importance of practicing is connected to actual program outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".