Initial Validation of the Mindful Eating Scale

Self-report scales for mindfulness are now widely used in applied settings and have made a contribution to research, for instance in demonstrating mediation effects. To date, there are no convincing data as to whether mindfulness skills generalise fully across life domains, and so some researchers have developed mindfulness scales for particular domains of behaviour. We present the development of a self-report scale to measure mindfulness with respect to eating behaviours. A previous measure, the Mindful Eating Questionnaire, whilst possessing good psychometric properties, does not agree well with standard definitions of mindfulness or possess a factor structure similar to well-researched generic mindfulness scales. We developed an item pool based on items drawn from popular generic measures of mindfulness and the resultant questionnaire was completed by 127 university students (77.2 % female; M age, 25.65 years; SD age, 8.89 years). An exploratory factor analysis yielded six factors: acceptance, awareness, non-reactivity, act with awareness, routine and unstructured eating. The factors correlated in the expected direction with existing measures of mindfulness (.113<r<.522), acceptance (.052<r<.325) and eating disorder symptoms (-.629<r<-.056). We anticipate that this measure will be of use in the further development of mindfulness-based interventions for eating disorders and obesity.