Smartphone monitoring of participants' engagement with home practice during mindfulness-based stress reduction: Observational study

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Date
2020-01-14
Authors
Parsons, Christine E.
Madsen, Maria A.
Jensen, Kasper Løvborg
Kæseler, Simon
Fjorback, Lone Overby
Piet, Jacob
Roepstorff, Andreas
Linehan, Conor
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Volume Title
Publisher
JMIR Publications
Published Version
10.2196/14467
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Abstract
Background: Standardized mindfulness training courses involve significant at-home assignments of meditation practice. Participants’ self-reported completion of these assignments has been correlated with treatment outcomes, but self-reported data are often incomplete and potentially biased. In addition, mindfulness teachers typically suggest that participants set aside a regular practice time, preferably in the morning, but the extent to which participants do this has not been empirically examined. Objective: This study aimed to analyze patterns of participant engagement with home practice in a mindfulness-based stress reduction course. Methods: We used a novel smartphone app to provide 25 participants with access to their daily practice assignments during the 8-week course. We analyzed data collected through our smartphone app to determine usage and listening patterns and performed analyses of the regularity and frequency of participant behavior. Results: We found that participants listened to a median of 3 of the 6 practice sessions per week, and they did not typically set aside a regular daily practice time. Across weekdays, participants practiced most frequently in the morning, but there was considerable variation in participants’ practice start times. On weekends, the peak practice time was in the evening. Conclusions: We suggest that it is feasible to integrate a smartphone-monitoring approach into existing mindfulness interventions. High-frequency smartphone monitoring can provide insights into how and when participants complete their homework, information that is important in supporting treatment engagement.
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Keywords
Mindfulness , Adherence , Smartphone monitoring , Meditation practice , Habit formation
Citation
Parsons, C. E., Madsen, M. A., Jensen, K. L., Kæseler, S., Fjorback, L. O., Piet, J., Roepstorff, A. and Linehan, C. (2020) 'Smartphone monitoring of participants' engagement with home practice during mindfulness-based stress reduction: Observational study', JMIR Mental Health, 7(1), e14467 (12pp). doi: 10.2196/14467
Link to publisher’s version
https://mental.jmir.org/2020/1/e14467
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10468/9546
Collections
Applied Psychology - Journal Articles
Copyright
© 2020, Christine E. Parsons, Maria A. Madsen, Kasper Løvborg Jensen, Simon Kæseler, Lone Overby Fjorback, Jacob Piet, Andreas Roepstorff, Conor Linehan. Originally published in JMIR Mental Health (http://mental.jmir.org), 14.01.2020. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Mental Health, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mental.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.