The DOI matches its Crossref record; 69 of the 70 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Conceptual and methodological issues in research on mindfulness and meditation.
Open accessAbstract
Both basic science and clinical research on mindfulness, meditation, and related constructs have dramatically increased in recent years. However, interpretation of these research results has been challenging. The present article addresses unique conceptual and methodological problems posed by research in this area. Included among the key topics is the role of first-person experience and how it can be best studied, the challenges posed by intervention research designs in which true double-blinding is not possible, the nature of control and comparison conditions for research that includes mindfulness or other meditation-based interventions, issues in the adequate description of mindfulness and related trainings and interventions, the question of how mindfulness can be measured, questions regarding what can and cannot be inferred from self-report measures, and considerations regarding the structure of study design and data analyses. Most of these topics are germane to both basic and clinical research studies and have important bearing on the future scientific understanding of mindfulness and meditation.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“ACM was designed to control for nonspecific aspects of meditation—such as dedicated self‐care time, structured practice, and expectation of benefit—while excluding explicit mindfulness training (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Kinser & Robins, 2013).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“These findings need to be interpreted with caution, given that they arise from secondary analyses, and because it has been well demonstrated that comparisons to a passive control can both overestimate effect sizes and identify effectiveness erroneously (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Goldberg et al., 2022; Kinser & Robins, 2013).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“Participants of the study were not blinded regarding which group (MBSR or ACT) they belong to.They were, however, blinded to which treatment group was the focus of the study and the different expected effects of each group as recommended by Davidson & Kaszniak (2015).”
From Effects of mindfulness meditation and Acceptance and commitment therapy in patients with obstructive sleep apnea with residual excessive sleepiness: A randomized controlled pilot study (2023) · cites this paper as Davidson & Kaszniak (2015)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“In mindfulness-based programs, participants are explicitly introduced to concepts and practices that overlap with the items they later complete, which increases the risk of demand characteristics and responses shaped by perceived expectations (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Ghanbari Noshari et al., 2023).”
From Measuring mindfulness: A systematic review and evaluation of self-report mindfulness scales (2026) · cites this paper as Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“However, these have been challenging to design and no gold standard active control for MM exists (Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Kinser & Robins, 2013).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“Despite these promising findings, a significant limitation of MM research is the reliance on passive control groups, which fail to control for nonspecific factors such as expectancy effects or structured self‐care time (Bishop, 2002; Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015; Goldberg et al., 2017, 2019).”
From The effects of mindfulness meditation on burnout in clinical genetic counselors: A three-arm randomized controlled trial (2026) · cites this paper as Davidson & Kaszniak, 2015
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“Both fields of psychedelics and meditation are marked by strong bias effects [119, 120], so reported in studies beneficial effects can be overestimated.”
From Mindfulness meditation and psychedelics: potential synergies and commonalities (2023) · cites this paper as [120]
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“However, these studies suffer from methodological limitations and thus the effects may be overstated, especially as both fields of psychedelics and meditation are characterised by strong bias effects (11, 173).”
From Examining the Potential Synergistic Effects Between Mindfulness Training and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (2021) · cites this paper as [173]
In the citing paper
“Yet, non-specific factors are often viewed primarily as a confound in studies of MBI mechanisms (but see33–35) and used as motivation for increasing the rigor of comparison conditions to isolate the specific effects of MBIs28,36–38.”
From A common factors perspective on mindfulness-based interventions (2022) · cites this paper as [37]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
(2013) · Cited by 44,563
(2008) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 7,477
A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method
Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1103572 · Cited by 3,422
(2005) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 3,197
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults and Children: United States, 2007
Barnes, P. M., Bloom, B. E., & Nahin, R. L. (2008) · PsycEXTRA Dataset · doi:10.1037/e623942009-001 · Cited by 3,144
Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.005 · Cited by 2,659
Self-citationA wandering mind is an unhappy mind
Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1192439 · Cited by 2,575
Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Goyal, M., Singh, S., Sibinga, E. M. S., Gould, N. F., Rowland-Seymour, A., Sharma, R., Berger, Z., Sleicher, D., Maron, D. D., Shihab, H. M., et al. (2014) · JAMA Internal Medicine · doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13018 · Cited by 2,380
Psychometric properties of the credibility/expectancy questionnaire
Devilly, G. J., & Borkovec, T. D. (2000) · Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s0005-7916(00)00012-4 · Cited by 2,295 · cited 1×
“Credibility of interventions can be assessed using a slightly modified version of the Credibility and Expectancy Questionnaire (CEQ; Devilly & Borkovec, 2000).”
MethodMindfulness-based stress reduction for healthy individuals: A meta-analysis
Khoury, B., Sharma, M., Rush, S. E., & Fournier, C. (2015) · Journal of Psychosomatic Research · doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.03.009 · Cited by 1,617
Flagged first, then by citations
1 of the 70 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Jacobson E Progressive relaxation 1938 2nd ed. Oxford, England Univ. Chicago Press
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Creswell, J. D. (2017) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-042716-051139 · Cited by 1,702
Van Dam, N. T., van Vugt, M. K., Vago, D. R., Schmalzl, L., Saron, C. D., Olendzki, A., Meissner, T., Lazar, S. W., Kerr, C. E., Gorchov, J., et al. (2018) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691617709589 · Cited by 1,506
Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice
Dahl, C. J., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2015) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.001 · Cited by 809
Self-citationLutz, A., Jha, A. P., Dunne, J. D., & Saron, C. D. (2015) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/a0039585 · Cited by 697
Fox, K. C. R., Dixon, M. L., Nijeboer, S., Girn, M., Floman, J. L., Lifshitz, M., Ellamil, M., Sedlmeier, P., & Christoff, K. (2016) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.03.021 · Cited by 656
Metadata
- Authors
- Davidson, R. J., & Kaszniak, A. W.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- ORCID
- Davidson, Richard J.
- Venue
- American Psychologist
- Published
- 2015-10
- Volume
- 70
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 581-592
- ISSN
- 0003-066X (ISSN-L)
- 1935-990X
- PMC
- PMC4627495
- OpenAlex
- W2406560806
- Cited by
- 773
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 44 · 2025: 69 · 2024: 69 · 2023: 87 · 2022: 86 · 2021: 91 · 2020: 86 · 2019: 87 · 2018: 66 · 2017: 50 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 4
- FWCI
- 62.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Psychologist (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (P01AT004952)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Keywords
- mindfulness, meditation, first-person experience, meditation-based interventions, control conditions, mindfulness measurement, self-report measures, research design, data analysis, conceptual difficulties
- MeSH terms
- Clinical Trials as Topic, Humans, Research Design, Meditation, Biomedical Research, Mindfulness
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
