Study to design and assess the validity of the Emory Meditation Practice, Tradition, and Experience (EMPTE) scale

This study aims to develop and assess the Emory-Meditation Practice Tradition and Experience Inventory Short and Long Forms. These self-report measures are designed to capture research participants’ meditation experience in a particular contemplative tradition, and to standardize assessments of meditation practice in the field. These inventories, which rely primarily on common contemporary Buddhist-based contemplative practices that are commonly selected for scientific investigation, will help researchers more clearly define subjects’ style of practice, control for variations between style and experience, and may ultimately lead to new findings associated with particular styles of practice. The EMPTE Inventory–Short and Long Form–will be administered to meditation practitioners recruited from a variety of popular Buddhist practice traditions and centers across the US in an attempt to capture diverse contemplative practices and also to refine methods for collecting and evaluating research subjects’ meditation practice styles. As there is no ‘gold standard’ assessment tool in this emerging field of contemplative science, the successful development of this scale promises to enhance the methodological rigor of this field by aiding researchers in determining what subjects are actually doing during a particular meditation session. The accompanying handbook is designed to be accessible to researchers involved in contemplative-based projects that do not possess specialized scholarly training in contemplative traditions, yet could benefit greatly from a researcher-friendly handbook of contemplative theory and practice.