Measures of Psychological Mindedness: A systematic review of psychometric properties

Objective: Psychological mindedness has been positively associated with psychological wellbeing and positive outcomes in psychological therapy. Valid and reliable measures of psychological mindedness are needed for accurate measurement of the construct. This paper is the first to provide a comprehensive review of existing measures of psychological mindedness.
Methods: The review protocol was pre-registered and systematic with methods reported according to PRISMA criteria. The quality of studies reporting on psychometric properties of measurement tools was against the COSMIN criteria.
Results: Twenty-three studies relating to six measures of psychological mindedness were included in the review. No measure demonstrated sufficient evidence when evaluated against all COSMIN measurement criteria. However, the Balanced Index of Psychological Mindedness (BIPM) demonstrated the most robust psychometric properties with sufficient evidence of structural validity and internal consistency demonstrated through studies of high quality.
Conclusions: Whilst the BIPM demonstrated the most robust measurement properties, further research is needed in relation to its content validity, cross-cultural validity, and responsiveness. The BIPM also does not incorporate ‘other-oriented’ psychological mindedness. Alternative measures such as the PMS and PMAP are available to measure psychological mindedness towards others but have less sufficient evidence of psychometric rigour.