Data for: "Mindfulness-based restoration skills training (ReST) in a natural setting compared to conventional mindfulness training: Psychological functioning after a five-week course"

This project integrates restorative environments research and mindfulness research: two disparate but related approaches to managing the demands of modern living. Both offer ways to improve attention regulation by detaching from routine mental contents and engaging with present experience. However, restoration works bottom-up, from supportive environmental features, while mindfulness meditation works top-down, through effortful training. Complementarities between the two are the foundations of restoration skills training (ReST), a five-week mindfulness-based course that uses mindful sensory exploration in a natural setting to build a meditative state effortlessly. As in conventional mindfulness training (CMT), ReST involves a learning structure to teach versatile adaptive skills. Data were collected in four rounds, with successively refined versions of ReST given in a botanic garden and formally matched CMT given indoors. Data were collected to test short-term outcomes of practice sessions and long-term course outcomes.

These data form the basis of the analyses presented in (Lymeus et al. (2020) Mindfulness-based restoration skills training (ReST) in a natural setting compared to conventional mindfulness training: Psychological functioning after a five-week course. Frontiers in Psychology). Some of these data were reused by (Lymeus et al. (2022) Mindfulness-based restoration skills training (ReST) in a natural setting compared to conventional mindfulness training: Sustained advantages at a 6-month follow-up. Frontiers in Psychology) as background to the follow-up analyses presented there. Therefore, some variables are replicated from this entry in the related entry (https://doi.org/10.5878/prw6-k648), where they are likewise marked T1 and T2.

These data were collected in four data collection rounds. In each data collection round, data were collected before and directly after two different five-week mindfulness training courses: restoration skills training (ReST; n = 75) and conventional mindfulness training (n = 77), between which participants were randomly assigned. In the fourth round of data collection, data were also collected before and immediately after the same five-week period from a separately recruited (non-randomized) passive control group (n = 29). The participants were university students who experienced stress or concentration problems.

Data were collected with the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al. (2006). Using self-report assessment methods to explore facets of mindfulness. Assessment, 13(1), 27-45.), Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (Broadbent et al. (1982). The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 21(1), 1-16.) and the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385-396). Show less..