Assessing mindfulness in children and adolescents: Development and validation of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM).

TLDR

The study aims to develop and validate the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM) across four studies. The authors conducted four studies: item development and comprehensibility testing of 25 items, exploratory factor analysis to reduce to 10 items, cross‑validation of the 10‑item measure, and validity assessment via correlations with related constructs. The CAMM demonstrated adequate internal consistency and was positively associated with quality of life, academic competence, and social skills, and negatively with somatic complaints, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, with these relationships largely persisting after controlling for thought suppression and psychological inflexibility, indicating it is a useful mindfulness measure for children and adolescents.

Abstract

This article presents 4 studies (N = 1,413) describing the development and validation of the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM). In Study 1 (n = 428), the authors determined procedures for item development and examined comprehensibility of the initial 25 items. In Study 2 (n = 334), they reduced the initial item pool from 25 to 10 items through exploratory factor analysis. Study 3 (n = 332) evaluated the final 10-item measure in a cross-validation sample, and Study 4 (n = 319) determined validity coefficients for the CAMM using bivariate and partial correlations with relevant variables. Results suggest that the CAMM is a developmentally appropriate measure with adequate internal consistency. As expected, CAMM scores were positively correlated with quality of life, academic competence, and social skills and negatively correlated with somatic complaints, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behavior problems. Correlations were reduced but generally still significant after controlling for the effects of 2 overlapping processes (thought suppression and psychological inflexibility). Overall, results suggest that the CAMM may be a useful measure of mindfulness skills for school-aged children and adolescents.