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A comparison of decentering across demographic groups and meditation experience: Support for the measurement invariance of the Experiences Questionnaire.

ABSTRACT: Theory and prior research suggests that decentering-an objective, distanced perspective on one's internal experiences-may vary based upon characteristics such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, and meditation experience. However, little is known about whether decentering measures are comparable in their meaning and interpretation when administered to individuals with different group membership (e.g., men or women; younger or older adults, etc.). The current study examined the measurement invariance of the Experiences Questionnaire (Fresco et al., 2007), a commonly used measure of decentering, evaluating age, gender, race/ethnicity, and meditation experience in three samples (students, community members, and clinical participants). Each sample was tested separately to assess the generalizability of results. The Experiences Questionnaire demonstrated full or partial measurement invariance in all cases, suggesting that scores are not biased based upon group membership and may be compared across individuals who vary in age, race/ethnicity, gender, and meditation experience. The current study also examined mean differences in decentering by groups, finding some evidence that decentering scores are higher for men, racial/ethnic minorities, older adults, and individuals with more meditation experiences. Implications are discussed for assessing decentering in diverse samples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

SUBMITTER: Naragon-Gainey K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6980891 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A comparison of decentering across demographic groups and meditation experience: Support for the measurement invariance of the Experiences Questionnaire.

Naragon-Gainey Kristin K McMahon Tierney P TP Strowger Megan M Lackner Ryan J RJ Seah T H Stanley THS Moore Michael T MT Fresco David M DM

Psychological assessment 20190829 2

Theory and prior research suggests that decentering-an objective, distanced perspective on one's internal experiences-may vary based upon characteristics such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, and meditation experience. However, little is known about whether decentering measures are comparable in their meaning and interpretation when administered to individuals with different group membership (e.g., men or women; younger or older adults, etc.). The current study examined the measurement invariance ...[more]

PMID: 31464465

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Project description:AimTo investigate whether items of the SF-12, widely used to assess health outcome in clinical practice and public health research, provide unbiased measurements of underlying constructs in different demographic groups regarding gender, age, educational level and ethnicity.MethodsWe included 23,146 men and women aged 18-70 of Dutch, South-Asian Surinamese, African Surinamese, Ghanaian, Turkish, or Moroccan origin from the HELIUS study. Both multiple group confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA), with increasingly stringent model constraints (i.e. assessing Configural, Metric, Strong and Strict measurement invariance (MI)), and regression analysis were conducted to establish comparability of SF-12 items across demographic groups.ResultsMI regarding gender, age and education was tested in the ethnic Dutch group (N = 4,615). In each subsequent step of testing MI, change in goodness-of-fit measures did not exceed 0.010 (RMSEA) or 0.004 (CFI). Moreover, goodness-of-fit indices showed good fit for strict invariance models: RMSEA<0.055; CFI>0.97. Regarding ethnicity, RMSEA values of metric and subsequent models fell above 0.055, indicating violation of measurement invariance in factor loadings, thresholds and residual variances. Regression analysis revealed possible age-, education- and ethnicity-related DIF. Adjustment for this DIF had little impact on the magnitude of age and educational differences in physical and mental health, but ethnic inequalities in physical health-and to a lesser extent mental health-were reduced after DIF adjustment.ConclusionsWe found no evidence of violation of measurement invariance of the SF-12 regarding gender, age and educational level. If minor DIF would remain undetected in our MGCFA analyses, we showed that this would have negligible effect on the magnitude of demographic health inequalities. Regarding ethnicity, the SF-12 was not measurement invariant. After accounting for DIF, we observed a reduction of ethnic inequalities in health, in particular in physical health. Caution is warranted when comparing SF-12 scores across population groups with various ethnic backgrounds.

Dataset Information

A comparison of decentering across demographic groups and meditation experience: Support for the measurement invariance of the Experiences Questionnaire.

Publications

A comparison of decentering across demographic groups and meditation experience: Support for the measurement invariance of the Experiences Questionnaire.

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