Abstract
BACKGROUND: Nursing students, who are in the process of becoming professional nurses, often have limited experience with issues related to life, death, and spiritual growth. Therefore, assessing their spiritual state and incorporating spiritual care into the curriculum are vital elements in the nursing context. As such, an appropriate tool is needed to evaluate their spiritual needs. This study aimed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Taiwanese version of the Spiritual Care-Giving Scale (SCGS-T), a tool designed to assess nursing students’ spiritual care competence, which is crucial for both their academic growth and future professional practice. The development of the SCGS-T is particularly important as it provides a culturally relevant tool for assessing spiritual care competencies and aligns with the need to integrate spiritual care into nursing curricula, promote comprehensive spiritual care education, and assess students’ spiritual development. METHODS: A total of 308 nursing students from a regional teaching hospital in Taiwan participated in this study conducted between September and December 2024. Participants completed the SCGS-T. Content validity was assessed using the content validity index (CVI), while construct validity was verified through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Test-retest reliability was evaluated over three months, and convergent and discriminant validity were examined by calculating the composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) values. RESULTS: The SCGS-T achieved an average scale-level CVI of 0.9. CFA revealed five factors across 35 items: general properties of spiritual care, spiritual perspectives, defining spiritual care, spiritual care practices, and spiritual care attitudes. The model fit indices were acceptable (χ(2)/df = 2.83, CFI = 0.83, RMSEA = 0.09). Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.83 to 0.96, with an overall score of 0.98. The AVE values ranged from 0.64 to 0.81, and the CR values ranged from 0.89 to 0.97, indicating strong convergent and discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms that the SCGS-T is a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating the spiritual care competencies of nursing students in Taiwan. The localization of this tool is significant as it provides a culturally relevant assessment instrument, supporting the integration of spiritual care education into nursing curricula. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-026-04352-1.