Mindful Attention Awareness Scale - MAAS

Technical Manual

Script Author: David Nitz (dave@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: January 07, 2019

Last Modified: January 07, 2023 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements a computerized adaptation of the short form of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) as described in:

Brown, K.W. & Ryan, R.M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 822-848.

Carlson, L.E. & Brown, K.W. (2005). Validation of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale in a cancer population. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 58, 29-33.

Duration

2 minutes

Overview

The trait MAAS is a 15-item scale designed to assess a core characteristic of mindfulness, namely,
a receptive state of mind in which attention,
informed by a sensitive awareness of what is occurring in the present, simply observes what is taking place.

Participants are asked to answer 15 6-point Likert-type questions with the following anchors:
"almost always", "very frequently", "somewhat frequently", "somewhat infrequently", "very infrequently" and "almost never".

Scoring: To score the scale, simply compute a mean (average) of the 15 items.

Instructions

can be edited under section Editable Parameters.
The original instructions are:
"Below is a collection of statements about your everyday experience. Using the 1-6 scale below, please indicate how frequently or infrequently
you currently have each experience. Please answer according to what really reflects your experience rather than what you think your
experience should be. Please treat each item separately from every other item."

Summary Data

File Name: maas_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
maasMean Mean of responses to the 15 6-point questions

Raw Data

File Name: maas_survey*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject, group, session With the current subject/groupnumber/session id
build Inquisit version number
q*_response Response given (in assigned values)
Scale: 1 (almost always) - 6 (almost never)
no reversed scored questions
q*_latency How much time (in ms) the participant spent on the surveyPage with this particular
question (the last time this particular surveyPage was visited)

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.

NameDescriptionDefault
pageInstructions The instructions that appear at the top of each surveyPage