Yoga module development and validation: A systematic review with methodological guidelines

In the past decades, more than fifty different yoga styles have been implemented in the therapeutic context to manage various diseases. Yet, not all of these yoga styles have been validated or standardized as a program. The aim of this article is to review the different methodologies used for yoga module development and to assess their quality. Three databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus) were searched using the following keywords and Boolean operators: (validation OR development OR design) AND (yoga OR mind-body) AND (module OR protocol OR program). Three thousand six hundred and seventy-one articles were enlisted, and based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 37 articles were narrowed down for review. Since no checklist exists to assess the quality of yoga modules, the authors designed a 23-item checklist to categorize each having low, medium, or high quality. As per the yoga module quality checklist, only 21.6% of the studies had high quality, while 75.3% of the articles had medium quality and 8.11% had low quality. A commonly used development method was literature review, while for validation, experts' scoring of the Likert scale was the preferred means. The feasibility of the module was carried out only by half of the studies. Few diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, obesity, Parkinson's disease, and obesity had more than one yoga module developed. The findings of this systematic review have shed some light on the growing need for standardized methods of yoga module development. The 23-item checklist can guide researchers in the homogeneous development strategies when designing yoga interventions in the future.