The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) is a 15-item mindfulness test developed by Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan to assess a core characteristic of dispositional mindfulness: open or receptive awareness of and attention to what is taking place in the present.
In their 2003 paper, The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), the developers report that the scale showed strong psychometric properties and was validated with college, community, and cancer patient samples. They also report that correlational, quasi-experimental, and laboratory studies showed it measures a unique quality of consciousness related to a variety of well-being constructs.
A self-report test like this is a prompt for reflection, not a diagnosis or a clinical assessment.
