Flow chart describing the number of people who applied to participate in the study (N = 836), the number of people who passed screening (N = 819), the number of people who were admitted into the study (N = 608), The number of people who completed the consent process (N = 438), and The number of people who started the baseline assessment (N = 389).
Meditation practitioners were recruited nationally. Interested individuals completed a screening form to determine their eligibility and to provide demographic information in order to maximize the diversity of the study cohort. To be included, participants had to be 18 years or older, currently residing in the United States, and have some previous meditation experience. Meditators were included if they currently or previously had a semi-regular or regular home practice, practiced using a meditation app, had taken a meditation class or course, attended a meditation retreat, or practiced meditation in another format.

Recruitment began in June of 2020. Participants were initially recruited through Jon Kabat-Zinn’s 13-week online Mitigation Retreat, through Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and through other meditation and wellness centers and teachers known to the research team. We then identified additional meditation teachers, centers, and research groups across the United States and asked that they share our study advertisement.

Recognizing the lack of representation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) individuals in meditation research, our intent was to recruit an ethnically diverse sample. We found that the initial applicant pool, recruited in June and July of 2020, was overwhelmingly white and of European descent (78%). In an effort to reach BIPOC communities, we paused recruitment and hired Dr. Kamilah Majied, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant, to help revise our recruitment and study materials in August of 2020. We also gathered input from scientific and meditation community leaders as to how we might make our materials more inclusive. In September of 2020, we began a second wave of recruitment that ran through December of 2020 and was specifically aimed at increasing representation of BIPOC participants. Throughout this time we also continued to admit participants from our initial applicant pool.

A total of 836 people applied to participate in the study, of whom 819 met the eligibility criteria. Of those eligible, 608 people were invited to participate in the study, 437 consented to participate, and 389 participated in the baseline assessment. Of the 389 participants that started the study, 281 participated in the 4-month follow-up, 233 participated in the 8-month follow-up, and 236 participated in the 1-year follow-up.

You can explore the participant demographics in more depth in our  interactive data-visualization dashboard .