Experiences Questionnaire (EQ)

The Experiences Questionnaire (EQ) is an 11-item self-report measure of trait levels of decentering or the tendency to have a detached, observer perspective on one’s thoughts and internal experiences. Decentering is theorized to consist of several components: meta-awareness, disidentification from internal experiences, and reduced reactivity to thought content. Relevant background is reviewed, including the conceptual foundations of decentering from child developmental research, its incorporation within the clinical psychology literature via mindfulness interventions, and evidence for its neural underpinnings. Since the EQ was formally validated in 2007, it has been used in many clinical and basic research studies. It has been translated into at least 15 languages, and the measure performs well across a variety of adult samples (e.g., students, clinical participants, meditators, individuals with pain or physical health conditions). In terms of reliability, the EQ demonstrates strong internal consistency and good temporal stability. The EQ generally shows the expected patterns of convergent and discriminant validity, though it is noteworthy that decentering and related constructs appear to be multidimensional. This finding leads to relatively weak convergence across measures of decentering, and there is evidence for separable facets of the EQ. Finally, the EQ is sensitive to changes in treatment across a broad range of psychological disorders. Taken together, the EQ is a methodologically sound measure of self-reported levels of decentering, applicable to a variety of samples and contexts.