The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, Version 2 (MAIA-2).

Author: Mehling WE1,2, Acree M2, Stewart A3, Silas J4, Jones A4
Affiliation:
1University of California San Francisco, Department of Family and Community Medicine, San Francisco, CA, United States of America.
2University of California San Francisco, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, San Francisco, CA, United States of America.
3University of California San Francisco, Institute for Health and Aging, San Francisco, CA, United States of America.
4Middlesex University London, School of Science & Technology, Department of Psychology, London, United Kingdom.
Conference/Journal: PLoS One.
Date published: 2018 Dec 4
Other: Volume ID: 13 , Issue ID: 12 , Pages: e0208034 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208034. eCollection 2018. , Word Count: 258


Interoception, the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body, has become major research topic for mental health and in particular for mind-body interventions. Interoceptive awareness here is defined as the conscious level of interoception with its multiple dimensions potentially accessible to self-report. The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) is an 8-scale state-trait questionnaire with 32 items to measure multiple dimensions of interoception by self-report and was published in November 2012. Its numerous applications in English and other languages revealed low internal consistency reliability for two of its scales. This study's objective was to improve these scales and the psychometrics of the MAIA by adding three new items to each of the two scales and evaluate these in a new sample. Data were collected within a larger project that took place as part of the Live Science residency programme at the Science Museum London, UK, where visitors to the museum (N = 1,090) completed the MAIA and the six additional items. Based on exploratory factor analysis in one-half of the adult participants and Cronbach alphas, we discarded one and included five of the six additional items into a Version 2 of the MAIA and conducted confirmatory factor analysis in the other half of the participants. The 8-factor model of the resulting 37-item MAIA-2 was confirmed with appropriate fit indices (RMSEA = 0.055 [95% CI 0.052-0.058]; SRMR = 0.064) and improved internal consistency reliability. The MAIA-2 is public domain and available (www.osher.ucsf.edu/maia) for interoception research and the evaluation of clinical mind-body interventions.

PMID: 30513087 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208034

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