Explanatory factors for the observed effects of meditation and their particular importance in behaviour therapy research include the following 3 categories: Category 1. Factors which are common to all strategies such as social support or therapeutic contact. Many clinical researchers have observed that controls with high face validity seem more…
Sample size is obviously a key factor in determining the validity and generality of trial outcomes. It needs to be determined carefully to ensure that the research time, effort and support costs invested in any clinical trial are not wasted. Ideally, clinical trials should be large enough to detect reliably…
The Jadad scoring system is a widely used method of rating RCTs for basic methodological rigour. However it seems to be inadequately structured to meaningfully discern the methodological standard of meditation trials. For instance, while all trials might be randomised, only a minority described randomisation methods and few use the…
A head-to-head comparison is where two different approaches to meditation are compared. They are easier to conduct then sham meditation comparisons since elaborate deception strategies are not required, they have inherent authenticity and ethical problems are much less likely. Head-to-head trials are important and valuable because they allow comparison of…
There are a large number of reviews on the topic of meditation in the peer reviewed journal literature. Their conclusions are remarkably diverse, ranging from overwhelmingly positive to considerably negative. These disparities are explainable by factors such as the methodological standards set by the reviewers, whether or not the researchers…
Meditation research to date has been plagued by conceptual and methodological problems. One of the most significant difficulties involves developing control strategies involving interventions which blinded participants might consider plausible, that have no specific therapeutic effects. Randomisation and management of other sources of bias is another area of concern; a…
It is difficult to make conclusions about meditation when the definition of the independent variable itself varies from study to study, if not from person to person. A homogeneous definition of meditation is essential for further progress in this field and yet, after almost 40 years of research the scientific…
The Western scientific and health community of scientists and clinicians has generated in excess of 3,000 peer-reviewed articles on or referring to meditation (as featured in the major bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE and PsycINFO). However, despite this impressive accumulation of publications, the number of randomised controlled trials of meditation…
Researching meditation poses a unique challenge, since participants receiving the “inert” (or “placebo”) treatment must be involved in a placebo-like activity that nevertheless requires their active, conscious and conscientious involvement. They must also be sufficiently convinced of its authenticity to motivate them to participate at a level necessary to maintain…
Shapiro (1992) observed the effects of vipassana meditation on a small group of meditators and found that while most participants experienced positive results, a small number of meditators experienced distinctly negative states. Glueck (1984) studied 110 participants and reported that the practice of transcendental meditation (TM) appeared to release repressed…
