Measuring professional readiness in public health education: development and validation of a 27-item competency self-assessment instrument in China

Background The capacity of the public health workforce is directly linked to the effectiveness of disease prevention and the resilience of the health system. However, China currently lacks theoretical and reliable assessment tools to measure the professional readiness of future frontline public health workers—undergraduate students majoring in preventive medicine. Methods Following an extensive literature review, the content validity was assessed through expert focus groups (n = 15) and pilot testing (n = 30). The instrument was then administered to 906 undergraduate preventive medicine students at three medical colleges in Shandong Province, China. To examine the construct validity and construct reliability of the questionnaire, the sample was randomly divided into two subsamples: 453 participants were used for exploratory factor analysis (EFA), whilst the remaining 453 were used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results EFA and CFA supported a 27-item, three-factor structure ( χ²/df = 2.777, CFI = 0.949, TLI = 0.941, RMSEA = 0.078, SRMR = 0.050), explaining 69.4% of the variance. The factors were identified as: (1)Personal Traits and Self-Management (10 items), (2)Interpersonal Collaboration and Service Awareness (10 items), and (3)Psychological Resilience and Self-Control (7 items). The instrument demonstrated excellent reliability (overall Cronbach's α = 0.950). Predictive validity was supported by strong positive correlations between all three professional readiness dimensions and students' overall professional satisfaction. ( r = 0.762–0.809, p < 0.001). Conclusions The three-factor structure of this questionnaire suggests that students organize their self-assessment of professional readiness by psychologically meaningful functional domains rather than curricular subjects. This 27-item instrument provides a practical, validated tool for monitoring students' self-perceived professional readiness, which can inform competency-based training and workforce development policy.