Author: Margarita Sala

Developing adequate measures is essential for the advancement of psychology as a science. Without the ability to adequately measure intended constructs, it is difficult for scientists to conduct experiments, form theories, or improve interventions. How do we know if a measure is adequate? Construct validity is the extent to which a measure actually measures what it is intended to measure. For example, an IQ test with high construct validity would actually measure intelligence and not something else.

In a large online sample and a college sample, our research group examined the construct validity of multiple forms of affective judgments of physical activity. Affective judgments of physical activity are the overall pleasure, enjoyment, and feelings associated with the experience of exercise or physical activity. Affective judgments have received recent attention because they are strong predictors of the amount of physical activity an individual engages in, and interventions targeting affective judgments appear to be a promising approach to increasing physical activity. We found that the majority of physical activity measures have substantial construct validity limitations. First, although the scales had adequate measurement consistency across items, most measures did not provide consistent results from one test occasion to the next. Second, these measures lacked convergent validity (i.e., the correlations among these measures were lower than would be expected if these measures were measuring the same construct). Third, they failed to demonstrate discriminant validity from some other exercise-related measures. However, the measures had adequate criterion validity (i.e., they predicted physical activity). Of note, scales with stronger psychometric properties demonstrated a stronger association with physical activity.

There are important implications from this study. Overall, affective judgment measures, and particularly those with stronger psychometric properties, are able to predict physical activity, suggesting affective judgments are an important construct to study. Focusing on improving psychometric properties of affective judgment measures could increase the predictive validity of affective judgment measures. However, it appears that the various affective judgment of physical activity measures have substantial construct validity limitations, suggesting that future research should focus on improving these measures. The lack of reliability limits our ability to know whether any changes observed in research are due to actual changes or a lack of precision in the measures. The lack of convergent validity suggests that future research needs to clarify whether enjoyment, motivation, affective attitudes, and affective associations are distinct constructs. This is important because if it is not clear regarding which construct we are measuring, we won’t know which construct might be changing.

Overall, these findings suggest that there should be a future focus on developing better affective judgment measures. If we have better measures of affective judgments, we will be in a better position to understand why people have the affective judgments they do and how to effectively intervene to increase physical activity. A focus on construct validity will allow us to identify the many possible dimensions of affective judgments of physical activity (e.g., enjoyment vs. satisfaction) and will allow us to identify when affective judgments change. A focus on construct validity can also improve interventions by allowing us to target specific affective judgment dimensions as well as allow us to more accurately evaluate which affective judgment dimensions are changing.

Chmielewski, M., Sala, M., Tang, R., & Baldwin, A. (2016). Examining the construct validity of affective judgments of physical activity measures. Psychological Assessment, 28(9), 1128-1141

If you have suffered from chronic pain, you have likely tried several strategies to relieve the pain. One strategy that has recently become popular for pain relief is mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation refers to a process of developing the skill of bringing one’s attention to whatever is happening in the present moment.

In a recently published meta-analysis, Hilton and colleagues (2017) examined the effectiveness and safety of mindfulness meditation interventions for the treatment of chronic pain in adults. A meta-analysis is a research methodology in which the findings from several studies on the same topic are combined and analyzed together. It is considered the gold standard of evidence for understanding the robustness of an effect. In addition, this meta-analysis is particularly valuable because researchers only included randomized controlled trials, which means that participants were randomly assigned to a mindfulness meditation condition or a control condition. Because this meta-analysis included only randomized controlled trials, findings from this meta-analysis shed light on the extent to which mindfulness meditation treatments lead to decreases in chronic pain.

There were 38 studies included in the meta-analysis that had patients reporting chronic pain for at least 3 months. The patients were then randomized to either a formal mindfulness meditation treatment or a control treatment. Control treatments included no intervention, an education support group, or treatment as usual. Researchers coded for the effect of each intervention. In addition, researchers rated quality of evidence for each study as high, medium, low or very low. A study was rated lower quality if, for example, it did not report important pieces of the study methodology or did not include participants who dropped out of the study in analyses.

The results indicated that mindfulness meditation was more effective than control treatments in reducing chronic pain. However, the effect size was small and the quality of evidence was considered low due to publication bias (a bias where findings with significant results are more likely to get published) and inconsistency of results among the studies. In addition, 13 out of the 38 studies were rated as poor quality. Mindfulness meditation was also associated with improvement in depression, physical health-related quality of life (e.g., ability to engage in physically demanding activities), and mental-health related quality of life (e.g., having emotional problems that interfere with daily functioning).

Overall, findings suggest that mindfulness meditation results in improvements in chronic pain, depression, and quality of life. However, the weaknesses in the body of evidence (e.g., publication bias, inconsistencies among studies, large number of poor quality studies) prevent strong conclusions. Future researchers should conduct more rigorous randomized controlled trials examining the effect of mindfulness meditation on chronic pain. The trials should report all important pieces of study methodology, have longer follow-up, and include all participants who were randomized into the study when analyzing the results.

Hilton, L., Hempel, S., Ewing, B. A., Apaydin, E., Xenakis, L., Newberry, S., … Maglione, M. A. (2017). Mindfulness meditation for chronic Pain: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 51(2), 199–213. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-016-9844-2

We all know that exercising is good for us. Yet, few of us engage in regular exercise. One reason individuals may choose to exercise or to not to exercise is that an individual may feel good or bad during exercise. For example, the better someone feels during exercise, the more likely they are to exercise regularly.

In a recently published study from our lab we identified factors that help explain how people feel during and after exercise. Specifically, we had healthy young adults complete measures of anticipatory affect factors (affective attitudes, implicit associations, and affective associations), anticipated affect factors (anticipated regret, anticipated pride), and cognitive factors (self-efficacy, intentions). Anticipatory affect is the experience of pleasant or unpleasant feelings while thinking about or anticipating exercise. Anticipated affect is the expectation of how one will feel after completing an exercise session, such as anticipated pride or anticipated regret. Cognitive factors include self-efficacy (i.e., the belief that one is able to perform a specific behavior) and behavioral intentions (i.e., a belief about one’s readiness to perform a behavior). After completing measures, participants ran or walked for 20-minutes on a treadmill and answered questions on how they were feeling during and after the exercise.

We found that both regret and pride (anticipated affect) and anticipatory affect variables accounted for unique aspects of how people feel during and after exercise. Only anticipatory affect uniquely accounted for affective response immediately post-exercise. There were no associations between the affective and cognitive factors and affective response 5-10 minutes post-exercise. We also found that the associations between exercise self-efficacy and how people feel during exercise was due to the overlap that self-efficacy has with affective factors.

Overall, we found unique associations between affective, but not cognitive, factors and affective response to exercise. Findings from this study highlight the importance of considering multiple factors simultaneously to understand unique predictors to affective response. Future research should identify the extent to which these various factors overlap and the extent to which they are distinct.  Findings also suggest that it is possible that intervening on affective factors may result in improved affective response to exercise, which could increase exercise behavior. Future research should examine this possibility.

Sala, M., Baldwin, A. S., & Williams, D. M. (2016). Affective and cognitive predictors of affective response to exercise: Examining unique and overlapping variance. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 27, 1-8.

Is it useful to step on the scale every day? Findings from a recent study suggest that daily self-weighing might be the key to successful weight loss maintenance.

In a recently published study in Annals of Behavioral Medicine  researchers examined why a successful weight loss maintenance intervention –“Keep it Off – Guided Intervention”– has been successful. Keep it Off is an intervention designed to help people who have already lost weight to maintain their weight loss. Participants in the Keep it Off Guided intervention received 16 coaching sessions over two years targeting several factors that have been suggested to influence weight-loss maintenance. This intervention was compared to a control condition where participants received two phone coaching sessions and a course book with the topics key to weight loss-maintenance. This study focused on identifying mediators of the intervention – variables that account for the success of the intervention. Possible mediators included: starting self-weighting, stopping self-weighting, minutes of physical activity, calorie consumption, using weight-control strategies, amount of meals eaten at fast food venues, body image, and TV-related eating.

Of note, an important strength of this study was that participants were randomly assigned to the control or intervention groups, and the potential mediators for maintained weight loss were measured every 6 months over two years. These study design strengths increase confidence in the findings.

The researchers found that starting daily self-weighing and not stopping daily self-weighing were the only significant mediators of the intervention. Given the findings from this study and other studies which have documented the benefits of daily self-weighing, individuals who have lost weight and are seeking to maintain it should consider starting and not stopping self-weighing. In addition, several potential explanations for weight loss maintenance emerged, including eating away from home, dietary intake, and body satisfaction. These variables were predictive of weight changes but did not mediate the effect of the intervention. The lack of intervention effect on these factors that were associated with weight change could be due to a lack of emphasis on these behaviors in the intervention. Focusing on targeting these factors could strengthen future weight loss maintenance interventions, and these pathways should be investigated in future weight loss maintenance interventions.

Crain, A.L., Sherwood, N.E., Martinson, B.C., & Jeffery, R.W. (2017). Mediators of weight loss maintenance in the Keep It Off Trial. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 1-10.

Most of us have tried tracking the foods we eat or used a FitBit in hopes of meeting our health goals. Have you wondered whether it was worth the trouble? Findings from a recent meta-analysis published in Psychological Bulletin suggest that it is.

Meta-analysis is a research methodology in which the findings from several studies on the same topic are combined and analyzed together. A well-conducted meta-analysis is considered the gold standard of evidence for an effect because idiosyncrasies that exist in any individual study that can affect its results are minimized when analyzing findings across studies. Thus, a meta-analysis provides a more precise and accurate estimate of an effect than any one study can.

In the recently published meta-analysis, researchers tested whether people who monitored their progress on goals were more likely to attain those goals. The studies included in the analysis covered a range of goals (e.g., weight loss, smoking cessation, physical activity, medication adherence, time management), although most were health related. The researchers also determined whether various factors influence the strength of the effect, such as whether the monitoring of goal progress is public (e.g., sharing step counts with friends via a social networking site) and whether it is physically recorded (e.g., using a smartphone). In addition, this meta-analysis is particularly valuable because the researchers only included experimental studies that randomly assigned participants to monitor goal progress or to a control group. Thus, the findings from this meta-analysis reflect how strongly monitoring goal progress actually has a causal effect on goal attainment – a critical piece to understanding the effect of monitoring goal progress.

The results of the meta-analysis included several interesting findings. First, goal monitoring interventions had strong effects on the frequency of progress monitoring, which led to consistent and reliable changes in goal attainment. Second, public monitoring and physically recording one’s progress both led to stronger effects on goal attainment. Third, the effect of goal monitoring was stronger when the focal behavior was the management of a specific medical condition (e.g., asthma, diabetes) compared to other health goals (e.g., weight loss, physical activity).

These findings are the most conclusive and definitive to date on the effect of goal monitoring progress. The findings clearly indicate that keeping track of the progress toward your goals will increase the likelihood you accomplish your goals. This is especially true if others can see your progress and you’re physically keeping track, like in a smartphone app. Moreover, the findings provide strong evidence to include goal monitoring as part of effective behavioral interventions aimed at changing behaviors such as physical activity.

Reference. Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., & Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142, 198-229.