Psychometric evidence of a brief version of the mindful awareness attention scale in college students

In recent years, there has been an increase in interventions based on mindfulness to reduce the psychological problems of college students. Therefore, it is necessary to have adequate tools to measure it. Considering this gap, the objective of this study was to perform a psychometric analysis of the five-item version of the Mindful Awareness Attention Scale (MAAS-5) in a sample of 398 Peruvian college students with an average age of 21.14 years (SD = 2.97). To this end, participants were given a battery of tests that included the MAAS-5, WHO-Five Well-Being Index, Patient Health Questionnaire-2, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-2 and the Garcia's Anger Proneness Scale. The results indicate that the structure of a factor of the MAAS-5 presents a good fit to the data and an adequate internal consistency. On the other hand, the MAAS-5 shows correlations theoretically consistent with depression, anxiety, anger and well-being, and factorial invariance with respect to sex. In conclusion, this study provides preliminary evidence that support the use of MAAS-5 as an instrument with evidence of validity, reliability and invariance to measure full attention in college students in Peru.