Debrief
This study asked you to fill in some questionnaires and attempt to engage with a seven day mindfulness meditation course delivered via a smartphone app.
The questionnaires you completed were:
From your responses, we will analyse whether your personality type, experience, or expectations predicted your level of adherence to the “7 days of calm” course. For example, we hypothesise that people scoring highly on neuroticism find it more difficult to meditate regularly, compared to people scoring highly on conscientiousness. We will also analyse whether there was any difference in your wellbeing before and after the course.
The researchers were not affiliated in any way with the Calm app, which was chosen for its ease of use, availability, and the potential for participants to continue to meditate after the study using the free version of the app.
If you didn’t manage to complete the course, please do not interpret this as a failure on your part. It could be because the app wasn’t suitable for you, or that this past week was not the ideal time for you to try meditation. It could simply be because meditation is not suitable for everyone. There are countless other activities which you may find better contribute to your wellbeing.
If you want to meditate regularly, find what works for you. Some people find apps useful because they motivate regular practice, and guided meditations help direct attention. Other people find that once they have learned the basics of meditation, all they need to conduct their sessions is a timer.
Once again, thank you very much for your participation. Feel free to contact me regarding any questions you may have at [email protected]
Joe
The questionnaires you completed were:
- The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, which measures happiness.
- The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Short Form), which represents five elements of mindfulness (observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging of inner experience, and non-reactivity to inner experience).
- The Big Five Inventory, which measures five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism).
- The Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire, which measures how often you ask yourself questions about your life, experiences and goals in both beneficial (reflection) and unhelpful (rumination) ways.
- The Generalised Self Efficacy Scale, which measures your level of optimistic self-belief.
- You were also asked to answer some questions about your past meditation experiences, expectations for the study, and basic demographic information.
From your responses, we will analyse whether your personality type, experience, or expectations predicted your level of adherence to the “7 days of calm” course. For example, we hypothesise that people scoring highly on neuroticism find it more difficult to meditate regularly, compared to people scoring highly on conscientiousness. We will also analyse whether there was any difference in your wellbeing before and after the course.
The researchers were not affiliated in any way with the Calm app, which was chosen for its ease of use, availability, and the potential for participants to continue to meditate after the study using the free version of the app.
If you didn’t manage to complete the course, please do not interpret this as a failure on your part. It could be because the app wasn’t suitable for you, or that this past week was not the ideal time for you to try meditation. It could simply be because meditation is not suitable for everyone. There are countless other activities which you may find better contribute to your wellbeing.
If you want to meditate regularly, find what works for you. Some people find apps useful because they motivate regular practice, and guided meditations help direct attention. Other people find that once they have learned the basics of meditation, all they need to conduct their sessions is a timer.
Once again, thank you very much for your participation. Feel free to contact me regarding any questions you may have at [email protected]
Joe