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From Conceptualization to Operationalization of Mindfulness To study a phenomenon scientifically, it must be appropriately described and measured. How mindfulness is conceptualized and assessed has considerable importance for mindfulness science, and perhaps in part because of this, these two issues have been among the most contentious in the field. In recognition of the growing scientific and clinical interest in mindfulness, a number of textual scholars of mindfulness have in recent years made efforts to describe and explain the meaning of mindfulness within one or more Buddhist traditions (eg, Bodhi, 2011; Dreyfus, 2011; Dunne, 2011; Gethin, 2011, Chapter 2, this volume). This chapter addresses the other key contentious feature of mindfulness science noted above, the operationalization of mindfulness. Herein we offer a critical analysis of mindfulness operationalizations, which predominantly take the form of subjective, or self-report methods. Mindfulness scales are used extensively in both basic and applied psychological research, and a number of questions about their use have arisen in recent years. We address several major questions in this chapter that centrally bear on the capacity of these measures to assess mindfulness validly.

Yet how a construct is operationalized, from the items and dimensions used to represent it, to the structure of the scale, is crucially dependent on how it is conceptualized. Therefore we begin with a brief discussion of classical scholarly and scientific conceptualizations of mindfulness, with particular attention to points of agreement and disagreement between mindfulness scholars and researchers. We …