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The Italian Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire: A Contribution to its Validity and Reliability

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Abstract

Mindfulness refers to the ability to be aware of and attentive to internal and external events, without becoming overwhelmed or feeling the need to react automatically. Recent studies indicate that this ability is associated with the following factors: mental health, psychological functioning, and stress reduction. Although questionnaires have been developed to measure mindfulness, so far these have not been adapted for use within the Italian population. Thus, the aim of our studies was to investigate the reliability and validity of an Italian version of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al. Assessment, 13, 27–45, 2006). The FFMQ is a self-report measure that is based on a five-facet model (i.e., Observe, Describe, Act with Awareness, Nonjudge, and Nonreact). In the first study, internal consistency, factor structure, and concurrent validity analyses were carried out on a sample of 559 volunteers. The second study entailed test–retest analyses on a different sample of 43 students. The results showed that the Italian FFMQ: (a) has a similar factor structure to the original English version; (b) has good to excellent internal consistency as a whole (alpha = 0.86) with sub-scale consistency ranging from 0.65 to 0.81, and test–retest stability for the total score being 0.71; (c) has good concurrent validity as demonstrated by significant correlations between the FFMQ scores and a number of self-report measures related to mindfulness. Our findings support both the adaptation of the FFMQ to the Italian context as well as the conceptualization of mindfulness in multi-faceted terms.

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Notes

  1. Three records were missing gender information and 3 were missing ages.

  2. Since homoscedasticity could not be assumed, the Welch-Satterthwaite method was used to adjust the degrees of freedom.

  3. According to Nunnally (1978) values of 0.70 or higher are considered acceptable.

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Conflict of Interest

Caterina Giovannini declares that there is no conflict of interest; Luciano Giromini declares that there is no conflict of interest; Laura Bonalume declares that there is no conflict of interest; Angela Tagini declares that there is no conflict of interest; Margherita Lang declares that there is no conflict of interest; Gherardo Amadei declares that there is no conflict of interest.

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The study protocol and informed consent have been approved by the Institutional Ethic Committee and meets the standards required.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, P.zza Dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, Ed. U6, Stanza 3170a, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Caterina Giovannini, Laura Bonalume, Angela Tagini, Margherita Lang & Gherardo Amadei

  2. California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University, San Diego, 10455 Pomerado Road, 92131, San Diego, CA, USA

    Luciano Giromini

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  1. Caterina Giovannini
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  2. Luciano Giromini
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Correspondence to Caterina Giovannini.

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Giovannini, C., Giromini, L., Bonalume, L. et al. The Italian Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire: A Contribution to its Validity and Reliability. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 36, 415–423 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-013-9403-0

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