Brief MBAQ Measures Adaptive Body Awareness in Adolescents and Young Adults

A concise, developmentally-tailored measure now helps clinicians, teachers, researchers, and meditation facilitators assess how adolescents and young adults relate to bodily sensations. The Mindful Body Awareness Questionnaire (MBAQ) is an 18-item scale designed specifically for ages 14-24 to capture adaptive forms of body awareness tied to a mindful attitude.

The authors developed the MBAQ through a multi-step process that began with focus groups including adolescents and young adults (AYAs) and psychologists, followed by pilot testing and statistical refinement. An exploratory factor analysis in a sample of 454 participants guided item selection, and psychometric properties were evaluated in a larger validation sample of 752. The final instrument resolved into three clear dimensions: equanimity, listening, and non-avoidance. Equanimity reflects a non-judgmental, open relation to sensations; listening captures approaching sensations as informative; non-avoidance indicates facing rather than avoiding bodily signals.

Adaptive body awareness - attending to and being curious about internal sensations in a non-reactive way - has been linked to greater well-being and lower psychological symptom severity. Prior to this work, no brief questionnaire specifically targeted adaptive body awareness in AYAs, a gap for a developmental window when interoception and emotion regulation skills are rapidly maturing. The MBAQ fills that gap with a short, age-appropriate tool that demonstrated sound psychometric properties across the research samples.

Practical implications are immediate for community mindfulness practice and clinical screening. The MBAQ’s brevity makes it suitable for intake forms in school-based mental health programs, community mindfulness classes, primary care screening, and research protocols where time is limited. Scores on the equanimity, listening, and non-avoidance subscales can guide teachers and clinicians in tailoring interventions - for example, emphasizing non-judgmental body-scan practices to boost equanimity, or grounding exercises to reduce avoidance of uncomfortable sensations.

For researchers, the MBAQ offers a developmentally-appropriate outcome measure for trials of mindfulness-based interventions with adolescents and young adults. For practitioners working with AYAs, the MBAQ provides a quick snapshot of where someone sits on adaptive body awareness and where to focus training - tuning into interoception, cultivating equanimity, and practicing non-avoidance.

This addition to the body of evidence around mindfulness and interoception invites wider use and further validation across diverse settings. Expect the MBAQ to inform program design, screening, and research in the near term as groups test how shifts on its three subscales relate to mental health outcomes and intervention response.