Recently, Associate Professor Jieting Zhang’s research team, in collaboration with Associate Professor Bassam Khoury of McGill University in Canada and Professor Rodrigo Vergara of the National Center for Artificial Intelligence in Chile, conducted a series of studies on psychometric issues in trait mindfulness from the perspective of embodiment theory. To date, two international journal articles from this line of work have been published. These studies respectively focus on the Chinese localization and revision of the Embodied Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Interpersonal Mindfulness Questionnaire developed by Dr. Khoury, as well as their cross-cultural measurement invariance.
Both papers were jointly supervised by Dr. Zhang (corresponding author) and Dr. Khoury, and were completed by Ji Ruixi, an undergraduate student from the School of Psychology at Shenzhen University (Class of 2021), who served as the first author of one paper and the second author of the other, together with graduate students Ying Cai and Wenjia Cai, as well as Mingcong Tang, a graduate student at Boston University and former intern in the research team. The two papers were respectively published in Mindfulness (JCR Q1, five-year impact factor = 4.4) and Journal of Personality Assessment (JCR Q2, five-year impact factor = 3.2),. The School of Psychology at Shenzhen University is the first affiliated institution for both publications.
1.Research Background
A substantial body of research has shown that mindfulness yields significant benefits for physical and mental health, positive psychological functioning, and overall human well-being. Whether mindfulness can produce enduring and deep-reaching effects depends crucially on sustained practice and the cultivation of trait mindfulness. At present, more than a dozen mindfulness scales are used both in China and internationally, yet the psychometric property of the most widely used measure, the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), remains less than fully satisfactory. Khoury et al. (2017), drawing on embodiment theory, proposed the concept of embodied mindfulness, emphasizing that mindfulness involves the integration of top-down and bottom-up processes (Siegel, 2012) and encompasses attention to, awareness of, and acceptance of the body, the mind, and the body–mind connection. The Embodied Mindfulness Questionnaire (EMQ) and the Interpersonal Mindfulness Questionnaire (IMQ), developed under this framework, have demonstrated sound reliability and validity in Canadian samples. However, differences between Chinese and Western cultural contexts in views of the body and mind, as well as in patterns of interpersonal interaction, may affect both the localization of these scales in China and their cross-cultural measurement invariance. Against this background, the two studies respectively examined the localization and measurement invariance of the EMQ and the IMQ.
2.Methods
Both studies developed Chinese versions of the scales using a translation–back-translation procedure. First, the dimensional structure was explored in samples of Chinese adults (EMQ: 330 participants; IMQ: 291 participants). Next, the factor structure was validated, and the reliability and validity of the scales were examined in another independent sample of Chinese adults (N = 380). Finally, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using a Canadian adult sample (N = 1,077). Through comparisons among candidate models, the studies provided initial evidence for measurement invariance between the Chinese and Canadian samples.
3.Key Findings
The dimensional structures of both scales in the Chinese samples were consistent with those of the original English versions, and the overall reliability and validity were satisfactory, except for a small number of items that were removed because of low factor loadings or cross-loadings. Among the dimensions, Mindful Responding in IMQ showed relatively lower reliability, which may have been influenced by a wording factor associated with reverse-worded items. Measurement invariance testing further showed that the two scales did not demonstrate full invariance across factor loadings, intercepts, residual variances, and inter-factor covariances. These finding were consistent with the previous research on the cross-cultural invariance of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), suggesting that the original total scores of these scales may not be directly suitable for cross-cultural comparisons.
4.Implications and Future Directions
These findings reveal the measurement equivalence issues that may arise when internationally developed mindfulness measures are adapted for use in the Chinese contexts. Future research will further explore methods for adjusting cross-cultural equivalence in the assessment of trait mindfulness, thereby providing methodological support for cross-cultural comparative studies of mindfulness. The research team will continue to integrate perspectives from traditional Chinese culture and work with collaborators to carry forward the research on cross-cultural comparison of mindfulness.
The research team also warmly welcomes graduate students, undergraduate students, research assistants, and other potential collaborators who are interested in psychometrics and intervention effects of mindfulness to join in future research.
5.Citation Information
Zhang, J., Ji, R., Vergara, R. C., et al. (2026). Validation of the Embodied Mindfulness Questionnaire (EMQ) in a Chinese context: Preliminary evidence for measurement invariance. Mindfulness. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-026-02806-w
Ji, R., Tang, M., Vergara, R. C., Zhang, J., Cai, W., & Khoury, B. (2026). Validation of the Interpersonal Mindfulness Questionnaire (IMQ) in a Chinese context: Preliminary evidence for cross-cultural measurement invariance. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1–11. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2026.2628575
Website to download the Chinese version of EMQ and IMQ: https://mindfulnessresearchlab.com/mmrl-measures
