Methodological issues in conducting yoga- and meditation-based research: A narrative review and research implications.

Snehil Gupta; Anju Dhawan

doi:10.1016/j.jaim.2022.100620

Methodological issues in conducting yoga- and meditation-based research: A narrative review and research implications.

Snehil Gupta, Anju Dhawan

Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine July 1, 2022 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaim.2022.100620 (opens in new tab)

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AI-extracted from the abstract

Characteristics	Systematic review Peer reviewed
Topics	Meditation
Keywords	Challenges Yoga Interventions Methodological issues
Key findings	The authors argue that yoga and meditation-based research suffers from substantial methodological problems, including inconsistent definitions, weak theoretical grounding, poor design reporting, recruitment and blinding difficulties, and questionable outcome measures, which limit the clinical usefulness of this literature despite its promise for various health conditions.

Abstract

Yoga and meditation-based interventions have been extensively utilized in the field of contemporary complementary and alternative medicine for various physical and mental health conditions. Ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has rekindled the interest of researchers in yoga and meditation for its preventive and therapeutic utilities. However, the available literature in this area has several methodological concerns, limiting formers' clinical utility. A comprehensive literature on this topic would stimulate researchers and guide them to conduct research on this topic with robust methodologies. The current review highlights the methodological issues with the yoga and meditation-based Research (henceforth, MBR), discusses some of the contentious issues, and provides future directions. The PubMed, Medline, and google scholar databases were searched to screen records dealing with the methodological issues on MBR. The search yielded 299 records, upon screening, only 24 articles were found suitable for the current study. Common methodological issues with MBR: lack of the consensus definitions of the yoga and meditations, interventions lacking theoretical framework of meditation; inadequate description of the study design; difficulty with participants recruitment, setting up the control groups, and blinding; difficulty in assessing the baseline characteristics of the participants, and validity issues with the outcome measures. A few research, however, have also highlighted the potential measures to overcome these methodological challenges. Yoga and meditation-based interventions are promising for several health conditions. However, literature suffers from considerable methodological issues, thus, limiting its utility in modern clinical practice. The study findings can stimulate and guide future research on this topic.

Comparable studies

Other systematic reviews and meta-analyses on meditation, most cited first.

Study	Year	Design	Participants
Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being Diverse adult clinical populations	2014	Meta-analysis	n = 3,515
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Stress Management in Healthy People: A Review and Meta-Analysis Healthy subjects	2009	Systematic review and meta-analysis
The psychological effects of meditation: A meta-analysis. Nonclinical groups of adult meditators	2012	Meta-analysis	n = 163
Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in Prevention of Depressive Relapse Adults with recurrent depression in full or partial remission	2016	Meta-analysis of individual patient data from randomized controlled trials	n = 1,258
Mindfulness‐Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness‐Based Cognitive Therapy – a systematic review of randomized controlled trials	2011	Systematic review

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