Some Key Research Questions for Mindfulness Interventions

Christopher Castille, Katina Sawyer, Christian Thoroughgood and John Buckner V

Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2015, vol. 8, issue 4, 603-609

Abstract: For industrial and organizational psychologists who are unfamiliar with the mindfulness literature, Hyland, Lee, and Mills (2015) nicely introduce the concept by highlighting key findings from prior studies. Although their review focuses on the many benefits of mindfulness, we believe that mindfulness research should address certain questions that will help us understand whether mindfulness interventions result in a cost-effective positive return on investment. In alignment with the perspective of evidence-based practice (Briner & Rousseau, 2011; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006), we call for a holistic evaluation of mindfulness, including a consideration of when or how unintended side effects emerge. Importantly, we discuss the potential mechanisms by which mindfulness generates valued outcomes (e.g., performance and collective psychological climate) and the need for more sophisticated research to isolate these causal effects. We also consider how the judicious use of utility analytics (e.g., cost effectiveness and return on investment) might help demonstrate the value of mindfulness interventions while also acknowledging questions of causality that must be addressed for such value to be experienced. We close by clarifying that we have the intention of promoting research to further evidence-based practices. There are organizations that have already begun providing mindfulness meditation interventions, and it is our hope that our commentary will help practitioners in these settings to consider the evidence suggesting that there may be unknown nuances regarding mindfulness practice. Ultimately, we believe that mindfulness is an important burgeoning area of research deserving of more scholarly attention.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:inorps:v:8:y:2015:i:04:p:603-609_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().