Assessing Adolescent Mindfulness: Validation of an Adapted Mindful Attention Awareness Scale in Adolescent Normative and Psychiatric Populations

The focus of this research was to validate a mindfulness measure among adolescents: the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale-Adolescent (MAAS-A). Study 1 tested the reliability and validity of the MAAS-A in a normative sample of adolescents from eight Midwestern public schools. Study 2 examined the utility of the MAAS-A in a clinical context with a sample of adolescent psychiatric outpatients who were randomly assigned to an intervention group who received Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or treatment-as-usual (control) group.