A measure of ethical climate can enable researchers to study the influence of the workplace on nurses' ethical practice. The purpose of this research was to develop an instrument to measure how hospital nurses perceive the ethical climate of their work setting and to evaluate its psychometric properties. The Hospital Ethical Climate Survey (HECS) was based on a concept analysis, an integrative research review, and the investigator's clinical and administrative experience. Schneider's (1990) concept of types of organizational climates and Brown's (1990) conditions for ethical reflection in organizations guided the research.

The sample consisted of 360 registered nurses from two hospitals in a large Midwestern city who completed a survey questionnaire consisting of the HECS, the Integrity Audit, a short version of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS) and a demographic inventory. The sample represented a 48% response rate.

Content validity was established by a panel of expert judges. Construct validity was assessed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the LISREL 7 statistical program. The final CFA model consisted of 26 variables in 5 factors. The Adjusted Goodness-of-Fit Index (AGFI) of.95 indicated a good fit of the model to the data. The subscales reflect nurses' perceptions of peers, patients, managers, hospital, and physicians related to dealing with difficult patient care issues or problems or both. Inferences about construct validity are also based on the results of a regression analysis in which the Integrity Audit score was regressed on the 5 HECS subscales, and the SDS. The HECS subscales and the SDS accounted for 45% of the variance in the Integrity Audit score. This suggests that although the HECS and the Integrity Audit are related, the HECS is assessing a unique construct not tapped by the Integrity Audit. A significant interaction effect demonstrated the existence of differences between the hospitals. Internal consistency reliability, using Cronbach's alpha, for the total HECS was 0.91, and ranged from.68 to.92 for the subscales. Future research is needed to refine and further validate the HECS. How nurses perceive the ethical climate of their work setting can influence how ethical issues are resolved.