Discussion
anxiety
POSITIVE, REGRESSION
The purpose of this research was to explore the impact of a mindfulness training on engineering graduate students, with a particular focus on how this training affected their well-being and capacity for research. During the course of the two studies comprising three years, where each group engaged in training for eight weeks in the middle of a semester, the intervention groups reported significantly improved emotional well-being at the end of the training. In contrast, the control groups consistently held steady or dropped on their well-being during that same time frame. While statistical significance was not observed across each cohort (e.g., intervention/control pair) for all measures, the combined data across both studies, two institutions, and multiple years of Phase 2 produced consistent and robust findings. Together these findings provide compelling evidence of the efficacy of this type of training with engineering graduate students.More specifically, both studies showed higher Emotional Health over time as measured by the ESQ, with significant effects observed for the Resilience and Outlook subscales in Phase 1 and the Attention, Self-Awareness, and Outlook subscales in Phase 2. Additionally, across both studies, participants in the intervention group perceived themselves as less neurotic over time. Following the trend seen in Phase 1, there were significantly higher levels of Positive Affect and significantly lower levels of Negative Affect as well as significant gains in mindful attention and awareness in the Phase 2 intervention groups. A significant increase in mindfulness was observed in the intervention groups of Phase 2 with all the subscales of the FFMQ-SF. This too is consistent with trends observed in Phase 1. Although the Research Satisfaction Scale did not reach significance in Phase 1, the intervention groups in Phase 2 reported statistically significant improvement in their satisfaction with their research across time. More extensive study of the impact on research satisfaction is warranted, especially given its links to persistence and achievement [The improvements in emotional health and wellbeing observed are consistent with those reported in prior studies of similar interventions with postbaccalaureate students. Guided mindfulness practices in 8-week interventions in a similar age group of medical school students and psychology graduate students have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety [Another notable finding of our study was that engineering graduate students were open to this type of training and ultimately expressed high levels of contentment with it. An inspection of qualitative responses to the summative survey revealed that participants appreciated the opportunity to devote time weekly to the in-class training where they would practice the meditation skills being learned. These weekly training sessions also provided them with an opportunity to connect with other graduate students. The small groups formed within each training group added an opportunity for regular check-ins with peers, which provided additional support and accountability. This social support aspect of the training could have presumably contributed to the positive outcomes observed in the intervention group. Overall, we consider the training’s positive reception among engineering graduate students a valuable learning from our study, given that this population might not necessarily be thought of as naturally drawn to this type of contemplative practice.Although we did not select participants, we found post facto that women were substantially overrepresented (40% and 46% for Phase 1 and Phase 2) and domestic minority students slightly overrepresented (10% for both studies) among the participants in this study compared to graduate student enrollment in engineering departments at University A (22–25% female and 6–8% domestic minority, over the time frames of the two studies). International students were modestly underrepresented (36% and 39% for Phase 1 and Phase 2, respectively, compared to 41–42% over the time frames of the two studies). Although the overrepresentation of female and minority students allows for more robust conclusions over the breadth of engineering graduate student backgrounds, it does indicate that voluntary participation in such activities may be more challenging to achieve among other student populations. This may have ties to the differences seen in treatment seeking for mental health and related services seen across disciplines in undergraduate students [Further analyses conducted with Phase 2 data revealed that for a few of the variables, the three-way Time x Group x Gender interaction was significant, suggesting that the significant Time x Group interactions we observed were qualified by Gender. Looking at those more closely, it appeared that in those cases although both men and women benefited from the intervention, women benefited slightly more. Whereas a recent meta-analysis (Bamber and Morpeth 2019) did not find evidence that gender moderated the effects regarding anxiety in the studies of mindfulness meditation on college student anxiety, there is other evidence in the literature that women may be more likely to benefit from mindfulness interventions [We note some limitations of our study. One limitation is that despite the use of random assignment, we observed some baseline differences between the intervention and the control groups, although not consistently recurring between studies and years. These pre-existing differences invite caution when interpreting the results related to these measures in an individual study or year. Regression to the mean is a possibility that we cannot rule out with our study design. We also acknowledge the possibility of demand characteristic effects in the intervention group, especially with measures of mindfulness and the Emotional Style Questionnaire, which closely align with the training content. Yet another limitation is methodological: while we had a wait-list control group that allowed us to control for the passage of time, we did not have an active control group that could control for other non-specific training effects [Mounting evidence points to the increasing prevalence of problematic mental health and well-being issues in the graduate student populations of our higher education institutions [