Overcoming challenges in meditation assessment: Development and validation of the Meditation Pictographic Scale (MPS)

Measuring subjective experience during meditation remains methodologically challenging due to reliance on verbal self-reports for embodied phenomena. To address this, we developed the Meditation Pictographic Scale (MPS) using a first-person phenomenological approach. We developed and validated the MPS across four phases: (1) qualitative interviews to refine pictographic items; (2) administration to adults (N = 373) in a randomized controlled trial, comparing three meditation practices (breath counting, loving-kindness, decentering) and active control; (3) psychometric analysis, including sensitivity to change, congruent correlations with related constructs, and internal structure via network analysis and exploratory factor analysis; and (4) assessment of structural changes across meditation states. Results showed that the MPS detected meditation-induced changes, with items clustering into positive, negative, and distortion-related experiences. The MPS demonstrated stable psychometric properties and sensitivity to specific meditation practices, offering a novel, non-verbal tool for studying meditation states, self-related processes, and altered states of consciousness.