AIM: This study aimed to translate the Nursing Professional Values Scale (NPVS-3) into Chinese, adapt it cross-culturally and evaluate its validity among clinical nurses, nursing undergraduates and nursing postgraduates. DESIGN: A quantitative and cross-sectional design METHOD: The NPVS-3 was translated from English to Chinese using Brislin's translation model. The study, conducted from July 2024 to January 2025, recruited 384 clinical nurses from hospitals in western, central and eastern China, along with 355 undergraduate nursing students and 246 graduate nursing students from three local medical universities. Reliability and validity were tested and multi-group analysis was performed to assess the scale's applicability across different nursing groups. RESULTS: The Chinese version of NPVS-3 consists of 28 items. The item-level content validity index (I-CVI) ranged from 0.833 to 1.000, with the scale-level content validity index (S-CVI/UA) at 0.857 and S-CVI/Ave at 0.976. Factor analysis revealed three factors accounting for 72.430 % of the variance. The scale demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.964). Multi-group analysis indicated that the Chinese version of NPVS-3 showed good measurement stability across undergraduate nursing students, graduate nursing students and clinical nurses. CONCLUSION: The Chinese version of NPVS-3 has good reliability and validity and can be used to assess the professional values of Chinese nurses, nursing undergraduates and nursing postgraduates.