Abstract: Objective: To revise the Nursing Practice Environment Scale and evaluate its reliability and validity. Methods: Totally 3 023 nurses from 5 hospitals were pre-tested using the Nursing Practice Environment Scale revised by Nursing Center of National Institute of Hospital Administration. Totally 375 281 nurses from 602 hospitals were formally tested. SPSS and AMOS were used to evaluate the reliability and validity of the scale. Results: Pre-test found that 36 items of the revised scale met the requirements. Formal test found that the overall Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.983, the Cronbach's α coefficient of each dimension ranged from 0.846 to 0.948; the overall split-half reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.957, and the split-half reliability coefficient of each dimension were between 0.755 and 0.932. The extracted 10 common factors by exploratory factor analysis explained 87.576% of the total variation; the first-order confirmatory factor model found that RMSEA value was 0.043, GFI value was 0.943, and AGFI value was 0.930, which were consistent with the model. Conclusion: The Nursing Practice Environment Scale had good reliability and validity, and could be used for the evaluation of the nursing practice environment in China.

Key words: nurse; practice environment; scale; reliability; validity; assessment