UW–Madison’s Simon Goldberg, an associate professor in the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology and a faculty member at the Center for Healthy Minds, was recently featured on the Association for Psychological Science (APS) podcast “Under the Cortex.” The episode, titled “Dosage Dilemma: Unpacking Meditation App Science,” explores Goldberg’s research on the relationship between meditation app usage and mental health outcomes.
Goldberg’s research, published in Clinical Psychological Science, analyzed data from a randomized controlled trial with 662 participants. The research examined different ways of measuring meditation app usage — such as minutes of use, days of use, and activities completed — and how these metrics correspond to changes in psychological distress.
“If we want a clearer answer on how much meditation is ‘enough,’ we need studies that assign different groups to specific levels of practice,” Goldberg explains. “Most of the findings suggested that more meditation was better, but there were some unexpected results where those who didn’t use the app at all actually showed greater improvements.”
Throughout the conversation, Goldberg and host Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum discuss various statistical approaches used in the study, including multilevel modeling and latent class analysis, and why different methods led to varying results.
Goldberg also offers a key insight: “My main suggestion whenever we’re generalizing from the scientific literature to our own experience is to look at our own experience and to trust our own experience.”
To learn more, listen to the full episode of “Under the Cortex.”