The psychometric properties of the Vietnamese Version of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire

Although recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in mindfulness with the development of many mindfulness scales and their adaptation to different cultures, there has been no attempt at developing or adapting a mindfulness scale for Vietnamese people. To fill this gap and encourage the study of mindfulness in Vietnam, we adapted a 20-item short-form of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ-20) into Vietnamese, which we called the FFMQ-V, and examined its psychometric properties in a series of three independent studies.

In Study 1, using a college sample (N = 412) we conducted several exploratory factor analyses to elucidate the factor structure of the FFMQ-V. In Study 2, using an independent college sample (N = 344) we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the goodness-of-fit for all obtained factor models from Study 1. In this study, we also examined the discriminant validities of the FFMQ-V by correlating mindfulness and other related psychological constructs, including acceptance, nonattachment, depression, anxiety, and stress. In Study 3, we replicated all data analyses in Study 2 using a community sample of young adults (N = 574).

Across all Studies, our results indicated that the hierarchical five-factor model with method factors best captured the latent structure of the FFMQ-V. Our results also showed that the mindfulness facets met our expectations as they correlated positively with the acceptance and nonattachment and negatively with the depression, anxiety, and stress.

In aggregate, our EFA and CFA results provided strong evidence for the hierarchical five-factor model with method factors in both community and college samples, suggesting that the FFMQ-V can be used to measure trait mindfulness of the Vietnamese young adults.