Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire-10 – A shorter Portuguese version to evaluate mindfulness dimensions in pregnant women

Abstract

Introduction

Mindfulness refers to the capacity of being present and aware, without feeling the need to react or judge that experience (Kabat Zinn, 1990). This ability is associated with mental health and stress reduction (Baer, 2014; Teasdale et al., 2014). Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) is widely used to measure mindfulness and its relation to psychopathology (Gregorio and Gouveia, 2011).

Objective

To analyze the psychometric properties of the Portuguese 15 items FFMQ (Baer; Gregório et al., authors’ manuscript) in a Portuguese sample of pregnant women.

Methods

A total of 427 pregnant women (Mean age: 32.56 ± 4.785 years) in their second trimester of pregnancy (17.34 ± 4.790 weeks of gestation) completed the Portuguese version of FFMQ-15.

Results

The FFMQ-15 Cronbach's alpha was unsatisfactory (α = 0.62) and five items presented low (< 0.20) correlations and had the effect of increasing Cronbach alpha if removed. Without these items, α increased to a satisfactory level (0.72) and all the ten items contributed to internal consistency. The factorial analysis of these ten items resulted in a three factors solution, which explained variance (EV) was of 53.9%. Based on items content, the meaningful three factors were denominated as follows: F1 Nonjudging of experience (EV 27.69%; α = 0.77), F2 Acting with awareness (18.00%; α = 0.77) and F3 Observing and describing (8.21%; α = 0.73).

Conclusions

Although the FFMQ-15 has shown good psychometric properties in other samples, in this sample of pregnant women a 10-items FMQ (Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire) version performed better, presenting good reliability and validity in evaluating three mindfulness facets.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.