Validation of the Factor Structure of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire

Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ: Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer & Toney, 2006) though is a widely used measure for assessing the trait mindfulness, its five factor structure has been questioned and a four factor model (without observe dimension) has been advocated in several studies. The validity of the initially proposed five factor and the alternative four factor models of the FFMQ was tested in the present study using the Hindi version of this measure (FFMQ-H) on a sample of 300 non-meditators (163 males & 137 females). Findings of the confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the original five factor of the FFMQ do not provide a good fit to the data even after allowing the five dimensions and some of the error terms to correlate. The test of the alternative four factor model (without the observe dimension) yielded a better fit compared to five factor model. The model was further revised by dropping three items (33, 4 & 10) having poor psychometric properties and/or poor loading which resulted in considerable improvement in the model fit. The final 28 item Hindi version of the FFMQ (without observe dimension) and its four factors demonstrated satisfactory reliability (alpha coefficient for the whole scale was .85 & for the four factors it ranged from .61 to .81). The findings suggest that the FFMQ-H can be used to reliably measure the trait mindfulness among Hindi speaking Indians and the trait mindfulness can be better summarized by four factors without the observe dimension that may be redundant for assessing it among non-meditators.