Abstract: Objective: To develop the Professional Ideology Assessment Scale for nursing undergraduates and test its reliability and validity, in order to provide a tool to identify their professional ideology status and implement individualized training. Methods: Rodger's concept analysis, literature review, Delphi expert consultation, and pre-survey were used to develop the scale. A total of 456 and 572 nursing undergraduates were recruited through online surveys in two phases for the reliability and validity testing of the scale. Results: The exploratory factor analysis extracted four common factors, explaining 62.756% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good model fit: χ2/df=4.536, CFI=0.913, TLI=0.905, RMSEA=0.079, SRMR=0.036. The Item-level Content Validity Index ranged from 0.890 to 1.000, and the Scale-level Content Validity Index was 0.966. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the total scale was 0.967, and the split-half reliability was 0.927. The final scale consisted of 4 dimensions (professional cognition, professional drive, professional expectation, and professional values) with 34 items. Conclusion: The Professional Ideology Assessment Scale for nursing undergraduates demonstrates good reliability and validity and can effectively assess the level of professional ideology among nursing undergraduates.

Key words: nursing undergraduate; professional ideology; assessment tool; reliability; validity; nursing education