Development and Rasch evaluation of the Focusing Skills Inventory (FSI): if you adopt an attitude of Body Listening, Trusting precedes Felt Sensing

ABSTRACT

The Focusing Manner Scale cross-culturally faced challenges regarding factor and item discrimination. To address them, we revised and contrasted the Focusing attitudes we now call Trusting, Felt Sensing and Distancing. Consequently, we developed the 30-item questionnaire Focusing Skills Inventory (FSI) and evaluated it using Rasch analysis in a German student sample (N = 747; N_{3-month retest} = 117). Rasch validity was proven, reliability indices were at least acceptable (all ≥ .76, except Distancing r_{3-month retest} = .65). Concurrent evidence was established with the ‘Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale’. Dimensionality analysis and correlations with the ‘Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness’ indicated that Distancing was successfully contrasted from Trusting and Felt Sensing. Trusting and Felt Sensing however still highly converged. Rasch analysis additionally indicated that Trusting precedes Felt Sensing when combined into a Body Listening scale. Overall, the FSI can be regarded as reliable, valid, and true to the established theory. Our Body Listening model further suggests that teaching Trusting before Felt Sensing may be beneficial.

KEYWORDS:

• Focusing attitude
• mindfulness
• Felt Sense Literacy
• psychometric
• Rasch analysis
• mental health

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the help of Ellen Aschermann, Charlotte Brenk, Michael Isfort, Manfred Borutta, Sam Phillipa, Olaf Scholtyssek, Astrid Schillings, and the Cologne Focusing Institute.

Disclosure statement

The first author works as a Focusing trainer. Both authors declare that they have no (further) conflict of interest.

Ethical statement

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2024.2373155.