Our Research Projects
Current Projects
Projects that are currently recruiting participants
January 2021: Evaluating a smartphone app for investigating the daily experience of meditators
We are currently recruiting 60 participants for a pilot study to “beta-test” a smartphone app (called ExSampla) for recording meditation sessions and the related online survey.
If you are practicing any form of meditation and:
- are happy to test and provide feedback on the new app and online survey designed for research with meditators
- are happy to share information about your meditation practice
- have a smart device (phone or tablet) with either an Android or Apple iOS platform
please consider taking part in our study
… and receive a £10 Amazon voucher
You can find the full details about the study using the following link:
Fell free to share this information with others who may wish to participate.
Thank you for considering to take part in the research.
Completed Projects
Recently advertised studies
June 2020: Wellbeing and motivation of mindfulness and yoga practitioners
This study has now been completed. It was conducted by one of my students on the MSc Positive Psychology and Wellbeing programme.
The results showed that people practicing yoga reported better physical health outcomes than people practicing mindfulness. There were, however, no differences in overall wellbeing between the two groups. Also, participants did not differ in the five wellbeing dimensions of the PERMA model.
Regarding the motivation to practice, yoga practitioners were more motivated by improving their physical health, while mindfulness and yoga practitioners did not differ in terms of their hedonic, eudaimonic, mental, spiritual or social motives for practicing.
Further exploration across both groups revealed that the more people engaged because of eudaimonic or spiritual motives the higher their overall wellbeing was. In addition, longer experience of engaging with mindfulness or yoga was associated with higher overall wellbeing and physical health outcomes.
The study sheds some light on differences of engaging with meditation or yoga practices that should be explored further with the aim to develop more targeted or even personalised pathways for promoting and accessing physical and mental public health initiatives.
