Development and Validation of the Hocus Focus Magic Performance Evaluation Scale for Health Professions Personnel in...

This study is to describe the development and validation of the Hocus Focus Magic Performance Evaluation Scale (HFMPES) which is used to evaluate the competency of health professions personnel in delivering magic tricks as a therapeutic modality.

A two-phase validation process was used. Phase I content validation involved 16 magician judges who independently rated the relevance of each of the five items in the HFMPES and established the veracity of its content. Phase II was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the HFMPES. This process involved 2 magicians using the HFMPES to independently evaluate 73 occupational therapy graduate students demonstrating three magic tricks.

The HFMPES achieved an excellent scale-content validity index of .99. Exploratory factor analysis of the HFMPES scores revealed one distinct factor with alpha coefficients ≥.8 across the three magic tricks. The construct validity of the HFMPES scores was further supported by the evidence from the known-groups analysis in which Mann-Whitney U test showed significant difference in HFMPES scores between participants with different levels of experience in delivering the three magic tricks. The inter-rater reliability coefficients were ≥.75 across the three magic tricks, which indicated that evaluation of the competency of health professions personnel in delivering the three magic tricks can be evaluated precisely.

Preliminary evidence supported the content and construct validity of the HFMPES with good internal consistency and inter-rate reliabilities in evaluating health professions personnel's competency in delivering magic tricks.