Report on Meta analysis of workplace based mindfulness interventions

Presenter: Arindam Basu

2021-03-19

Background

Mindfulness meditation is known to be associated with improved mental well-being
Several workplaces are known to establish employee well-being activities
It is not clear if Mindfulness meditation as part of employee well-being training has the desired effect

Goal

Conduct meta-analysis of literature on effectiveness of workplace-based mindfulness based meditations for mental well-being and reduced stress among employees who take part in it

PICO question

Parameter	Definition
Population	Employees in workplaces
Intervention	Wellness interventions
Comparator	All other approaches
Outcomes	Wellness indicators, Stress indicators

Search Strategies

CINAHL, PsycInfo, Medline/Pubmed
Search Dates 1/1/2009 - 31/12/2019
Search terms in different combinations in consultation with Information Specialist at UC Library

Inclusion/Exclusion criteria

PICO as specified above
Published in peer-reviewed publications between 1/1/2009 - 31/12/2019
English language
Included ‘research’ reports (letters, editorials, opinions excluded)

Initial filtering and hand search

First pass: reviewed Titles and abstracts with inclusion/exclusion criteria
Full text obtained from the included studies in the first pass
Reference lists of included studies in first pass hand searched
Obtained Full length studies consistent with inclusion criteria

PRISMA chart is Incomplete, not done yet

Data extraction from individual studies (incomplete, work-in-progress)

Used Spreadsheet to obtain data
Abstracted Author, Date, Population, Intervention, Outcome, Effect Estimates per study
If not provided in the study,
Effect Estimates were converted to Change Measures for ALL STUDIES
Change Measures = Difference of baseline estimates between Intervention and Control Groups

Subset of studies that had mindfulness meditation as intervention

Selected subset of studies were:
Randomised Controlled Trials
Had “Mindfulness meditation” as Intervention
Considered all outcomes
Studies that reported Change Measures (differences in mean scores from baseline)
Or studies from where Change Measures were calculated

Results table

Author	Year	Outcome	Intervention	Control	Effect_Size	SD
Joyce	2019	Resilience	60	83	3.12	3.45
Huang	2015	Psychological distress	72	72	-2.48	0.76
Crain	2016	Mindfulness	54	59	0.17	0.55
Bostock	2019	Subjective wellbeing	128	110	2.90	7.45
Baccarini	2013	Subjective wellebing	10	10	16.22	7.48
Arredondo	2017	Perceived Stress	21	19	1.51	6.76
Aikens	2014	Perceived stress	44	45	0.89	0.93

Summary of Wellbeing outcomes

Summary of Stress outcomes

Test of publication bias

Meta regression/Sensitivity Analyses (Incomplete, not done yet)

Summary

Mindfulness meditation practices in workplace may increase wellbeing and reduce stress
Both wellness and stress on this small incomplete meta-analysis are INCONCLUSIVE
Further, this “incomplete meta-analysis” has publication bias:
Small negative studies are under-represented
More work needed to fully include ALL RCTs included to date