Effective Online Mindfulness Training Characteristics
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Practicing mindfulness can help all sorts of people no matter what is going on in their lives. Learning mindfulness is very accessible, whether you have a center in your hometown or just an internet connection, whether you have enough money for a retreat or do not have any money at all, or if you want to learn how to teach mindfulness to others. No matter what your situation is, there is a mindfulness training option tailored to your needs.” – Joaquín Selva
Mindfulness training has been shown through extensive research to be effective in improving physical and psychological health and particularly with reducing the physical and psychological reactions to stress and increasing resilience in the face of stress. The vast majority of the mindfulness training techniques, however, require a trained therapist. This results in costs that many clients can’t afford. In addition, the participants must be available to attend multiple sessions at particular scheduled times that may or may not be compatible with their busy schedules and at locations that may not be convenient. As an alternative, mindfulness training over the internet have been developed. These have tremendous advantages in decreasing costs, making training schedules much more flexible, and eliminating the need to go repeatedly to specific locations.
The research has indicated that mindfulness training online can be effective for improving the health and well-being of the participants. But the question arises as to what is the best way to train mindfulness online for improving psychological health. In today’s Research News article “Relating Instructional Design Components to the Effectiveness of Internet-Based Mindfulness Interventions: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6906627/?report=classic), Lippmann and colleagues review the research studies employing online mindfulness training.
They focused on the instructional designs used in the online trainings. In particular they focused on formal learning tasks, supportive educational materials, timely support and reminders, and informal practices of targeted skills. There were 18 published research studies of online mindfulness training that fulfilled the criteria. There were a variety of outcome measures that varied with different studies but primarily they measured anxiety, depression, stress, distress, pain, physical fitness, and quality of life.
They classified 11 studies as having highly effective outcomes, 6 as less effective, and 1 as ineffective. They found that the studies that produced more and less effective outcomes all implemented formal practice at least twice a week. But the studies with more effective outcomes also had good supportive educational materials, timely support and reminders, and informal practices of targeted skills, while the studies with less effective outcomes had much less robust implementations of supportive educational materials, timely support and reminders, and informal practices of targeted skills. The study that had ineffective outcomes had formal practice only once a week and none of the other instructional design components were present.
The results suggest that online mindfulness trainings can be very effective in improving the physical and psychological health of the participants. But there needs to be several instructional components present and well implemented to maximize effectiveness. These components include clear formal mindfulness training occurring at least twice a week, instruction in the ideas underlying the practices, frequent reminders to practice, and an emphasis on practice outside of the formal online instruction. The better these components are implemented in the online instruction the better the improvements in the well-being of the participants.
So, online mindfulness training programs are very effective if they are well designed to implement four important instructional components.
“participants who completed the online mindfulness course reported significantly lower levels of perceived stress, depression and anxiety. The large effect sizes associated with completing the intervention were maintained for all of the outcome variables at 3- and 6-month follow-up.” – Dawn Querstret
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Lippmann, M., Laudel, H., Heinzle, M., & Narciss, S. (2019). Relating Instructional Design Components to the Effectiveness of Internet-Based Mindfulness Interventions: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(11), e12497. doi:10.2196/12497
Abstract
Background
Internet-based mindfulness interventions are a promising approach to address challenges in the dissemination and implementation of mindfulness interventions, but it is unclear how the instructional design components of such interventions are associated with intervention effectiveness.
Objective
The objective of this study was to identify the instructional design components of the internet-based mindfulness interventions and provide a framework for the classification of those components relative to the intervention effectiveness.
Methods
The critical interpretive synthesis method was applied. In phase 1, a strategic literature review was conducted to generate hypotheses for the relationship between the effectiveness of internet-based mindfulness interventions and the instructional design components of those interventions. In phase 2, the literature review was extended to systematically explore and revise the hypotheses from phase 1.
Results
A total of 18 studies were identified in phase 1; 14 additional studies were identified in phase 2. Of the 32 internet-based mindfulness interventions, 18 were classified as more effective, 11 as less effective, and only 3 as ineffective. The effectiveness of the interventions increased with the level of support provided by the instructional design components. The main difference between effective and ineffective interventions was the presence of just-in-time information in the form of reminders. More effective interventions included more supportive information (scores: 1.91 in phases 1 and 2) than less effective interventions (scores: 1.00 in phase 1 and 1.80 in phase 2), more part-task practice (scores: 1.18 in phase 1 and 1.60 in phase 2) than less effective interventions (scores: 0.33 in phase 1 and 1.40 in phase 2), and provided more just-in-time information (scores: 1.35 in phase 1 and 1.67 in phase 2) than less effective interventions (scores: 0.83 in phase 1 and 1.60 in phase 2). The average duration of more effective, less effective, and ineffective interventions differed for the studies of phase 1, with more effective interventions taking up more time (7.45 weeks) than less effective (4.58 weeks) or ineffective interventions (3 weeks). However, this difference did not extend to the studies of phase 2, with comparable average durations of effective (5.86 weeks), less effective (5.6 weeks), and ineffective (7 weeks) interventions.
Conclusions
Our results suggest that to be effective, internet-based mindfulness interventions must contain 4 instructional design components: formal learning tasks, supportive information, part-task practice, and just-in-time information. The effectiveness of the interventions increases with the level of support provided by each of these instructional design components.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6906627/?report=classic