A short version of the Kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills

Abstract

The Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS; Baer, Smith, & Allen, 2004) is a 39-item self-report measure for the assessment of four different mindfulness factors. This study aimed at developing a short version of the German adaptation of the KIMS (KIMS-Short). Confirmatory factor analyses were carried out with two samples (N = 469 and N = 602) to develop subscales with fewer items and to confirm the factor structure of the KIMS-Short. Furthermore, the relations between the KIMS-Short subscales and other scales were evaluated. The KIMS-Short with its 20 items enable researchers to replicate the basic factor structure of four separate mindfulness skills. However, the analyses for the "observing" subscale revealed two different but strongly correlated factors depending on whether the observed stimuli were internal or external phenomena.