> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getrivet.ca/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# MAAS — dispositional mindfulness
> The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale — 15 items on present-moment attention, with the canonical inverted response scale baked in.
The MAAS is the brief measure of dispositional mindfulness. Not a state
read of "how mindful are you right now" — a trait read of how often, in
day-to-day life, the client is actually present versus running on
autopilot.
## What it measures
Fifteen items, each describing a **mindless** experience — "I find
myself doing things without paying attention", "I could be experiencing
some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later".
That framing is intentional. Brown and Ryan (2003) found dispositional
mindfulness is more reliably measured by asking about its absence than
its presence — people can report "I missed that" more honestly than "I
was fully present."
## When to use it
* Pre/post a mindfulness-based intervention (MBSR, MBCT, the
mindfulness modules in DBT or ACT)
* Baseline for any course of treatment where present-moment attention
is part of the work
* Periodic re-administration to track whether the client's lived
experience of attention is shifting outside session
## How clients fill it out
Three to five minutes self-administered. Items are rated on a 1-6 scale
(Almost always → Almost never).
## How Rivet scores it
The response scale is **intentionally inverted**. Because every item
describes a mindless experience, the designers flipped the scale so
that:
* **1 = Almost always** (most often mindless = least mindful)
* **6 = Almost never** (rarely mindless = most mindful)
Higher raw score = more mindful. No engine-level reverse-scoring — the
scale is already in "higher = better" direction by design.
### Total
Sum 15-90, or canonical mean (sum / 15) on the 1-6 scale.
**No diagnostic cutoff** — the MAAS is descriptive. Brown and Ryan
published US adult norms of approximately M = 4.0 (SD ≈ 0.7) on the
1-6 per-item average, which is a useful comparator but not a clinical
threshold.
If the scoring direction looks "backwards" at first glance — it isn't.
Every item is mindless-framed, and the scale was deliberately built so
that higher numbers mean more mindful behaviour. Don't reverse-score
it.
## How to read it
The MAAS trends slowly. A meaningful shift after a four-week
mindfulness-based intervention is in the 0.3-0.5 range on the per-item
average. Smaller shifts session-to-session are within measurement noise.
## MAAS vs SCS-SF
Both are descriptive process measures with no diagnostic cutoff, and both
belong to mindfulness-adjacent work, but they measure different things.
The MAAS measures attention — whether the person is present to what they
are doing, or operating on autopilot. Every item describes a *mindless*
moment, and the response scale is inverted by design so that a higher
score still means more mindful.
The [SCS-SF](/clinical-templates/cbt/scs-sf) measures how the person
treats themselves when things go badly, across six dimensions — three
kind and three harsh.
Someone can be highly present and still brutal with themselves. If the
work is attention training, the MAAS is closer to it; if the work is about
the inner critic, the SCS-SF is. For emotion-regulation style rather than
either, that's the [ERQ](/clinical-templates/screening/erq).
## Is it free to use?
**Yes.** Free clinical and research use, per Brown and Ryan.
## Citation
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present:
Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. *Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology,* 84(4), 822-848.
Free clinical / research use.
## Related articles
The Neff/Germer MSC exercise — pairs naturally with mindfulness
tracking.
Day-to-day affect data to triangulate against MAAS trend.
Visual mindfulness exercises for in-session use alongside the MAAS.