Translation and content validity of a brief scale of mindfulness for Peruvian adolescents

To translate into Spanish and analyze the evidence of validity based on the content of the items in the brief version of the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale of 5 items (MAAS-5).

An instrumental study that involved the translation to Spanish of the items of the short version of the MAAS-5 scale, using the back-translation procedure. We analyzed the evidence of validity based on the test content, with the participation of a total of 14 expert judges. The degree of clarity, coherence and relevance of the items was quantified using the Aiken V coefficient and their 95% confidence intervals using an ad hoc template developed in the MS Excel program.

The items of the MAAS-5 show favourable evaluations of their clarity, coherence and relevance, where all the values of V were statistically significant and greater than 0.70. On the other hand, the lower limit of 95% confidence intervals of all the items satisfies the criterion at population level (Li˃0.59).

The empirical evidence of validity based on the test content of the MAAS-5 reports that all are sufficiently relevant, coherent and clear to adequately represent the construct mindfulness, both at sample and population level. This suggests that the MAAS-5 can be a brief and useful measure to assess mindfulness. On the other hand we suggest carrying out further studies that analyze other sources of evidence of validity of the MAAS-5.