Appalachian Initiative for Mindfulness

Our Evaluation Results

To date, AIM has delivered trainings to multiple first responder units in the state (e.g., Monongalia County EMS, Morgantown Fire Department, Marion County Rescue Squad, etc.).  Participants completed pre/post measures, with additional post-training data collection on program satisfaction, including qualitative comments.  

We use the Toronto Mindfulness Scale Trait Version (Valö et al,. 2022) and Profile of Mood States (Grove & Prapavessis, 1992) as our validated measures to assess changes. 

Mean Score and Standard Deviations for Our Measures

Overall Mindfullness

  • Pre-Training: 2.47 (0.67)
  • Post Training: 2.64 (0.73)a

Curiousity Subscale

  • Pre-Training: 2.55 (0.86)
  • Post Training: 2.83 (0.90)

Decentering Subscale

  • Pre-Training: 2.40 (0.64)
  • Post Training: 2.48 (0.67)

Negative Mood Disturbance

  • Pre-Training: 94.00 (16.7)
  • Post Training: 86.18 (13.3)b

a Statistically significant (p<.001) increases in mindfulness.
b Statistically significant (p<.001) decreases in negative mood disturbance.

Curiosity reflects an attitude of wanting to learn more about one’s experiences.

Decentering reflects an awareness of one’s experience with some distance and disidentification rather than over-identifying with thoughts and feelings.

Citations

Grove, J.R., & Prapavessis, H. (1992). Preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of an abbreviated Profile of Mood

States. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 23, 93-109.

Valö, L., Haigh, E.A.P., Bosma, C.M., & Lau, M.A. (2022). Toronto Mindfulness Scale (TMS): Trait Version. In: Medvedev, O.N., Krägeloh, C.U., Siegert, R.J., Singh, N.N. (eds) Handbook of Assessment in Mindfulness Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77644-2_17-1

Post-Training Satisfaction Findings

  • 82% of participants reported our training was fairly/very useful.
  • 82% of participants reported they were likely/very likely to recommend the training.
  • 75% of participants reported they were likely/very likely to participate in training again.
  • 73% of participants reported the length of training was right.

Sample Participant Comments about our Training

  • “Realizing that I’m not the only one who feels these things"
  • “Learning to identify the different stages and how to kinda resolve some issues”
  • “Learning to relax my mind”
  • “Learning to let go”
  • “Slowing down”
  • “How to understand my feelings”
  • “Practical application examples”
  • “Realizing my inner critic”
  • “Mediation techniques”…many time