68 Chapter 4 Program Completion The number of sessions attended by each participant was noted by the mindfulness teacher. On average, participants attended 7.10 sessions, ranging from 4 to 8 sessions. The distribution of session attendance was as follows: 2 participants attended 4 sessions, 2 participants attended 5 sessions, 8 participants attended 6 sessions, 27 participants attended 7 sessions, and 28 participants attended 8 sessions. Primary outcome: Perceived Stress The results of linear mixed model analyses for primary and secondary outcomes are summarized in Table 2. A significant group by time interaction was found for the primary (mental health) outcome perceived stress (p < 0.01), so the intervention was significantly more effective in decreasing perceived stress over time than the control condition. Large effects in favor of the intervention group were found for perceived stress at post-treatment (d = -0.84), and a moderate effect at follow-up (d = -0.69). Figure 4 shows estimated marginal means for perceived stress over time and across groups. Figure 5 presents all secondary outcome measures. Per-protocol analyses using completers only did not reveal different results compared to Intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses for the primary outcome. Figure 4 Time point and group primary outcome
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