Abstract / Summary
Purpose: The Mind Excessively Wandering Scale (MEWS) assesses excessive mind-wandering. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Persian 12-item MEWS (MEWS-12) among Iranian adolescents, focusing on factor structure, internal consistency, associations with external measures, known-groups validity, and gender measurement invariance.
Method: In this cross-sectional study, 506 adolescents aged 12-18 years completed the MEWS and measures of rumination, attentional control, mindfulness, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and positive and negative affect. All 15 original MEWS items were administered, with the developer-recommended 12-item version designated for primary analyses. The sample was randomly divided, with stratification by gender, into independent exploratory factor analysis (EFA; n = 254) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n = 252) subsamples.
Finding: Parallel analysis favored a two-factor EFA solution accounting for 54% of the variance, with a factor correlation of 0.73. In CFA, the correlated two-factor model showed better fit than the unidimensional model, χ2(53) = 122.89, CFI = 0.971, TLI = 0.964, RMSEA = 0.072, 90% CI [0.056, 0.089], and SRMR = 0.054, although the factors were highly correlated (r = 0.858). Internal consistency was good (α = 0.893; ω = 0.917). Higher MEWS-12 scores were associated with greater depressive and anxiety symptoms, rumination, and negative affect, and with lower mindfulness and positive affect; the association with self-reported attentional control was small and non-significant. Adolescents at or above the selected GAD-7 and PHQ-9 symptom thresholds had higher MEWS-12 scores than those below the respective thresholds. Gender invariance analyses provided preliminary support for comparable measurement properties across girls and boys.
Conclusion: The findings provide preliminary evidence regarding the psychometric properties of the Persian MEWS-12 among Iranian adolescents. The two-factor representation should be interpreted cautiously given the substantial factor overlap. Further replication in independent samples and evaluation in longitudinal and clinically characterized studies are warranted.