Background Spiritual care is a central element of holistic nursing, but is not often made explicit in the theoretical and practical components of pre-registration nursing programmes. A composite scale will assist in identifying students' perceptions and issues to be addressed in curricula and practice settings. Objective To develop and test the Spiritual Care-Giving Scale that measures student nurses' perceptions towards spirituality and spiritual care. Method Following a critical review of the literature, review by an expert panel and a pilot study, the SCGS, was administered to a convenience sample of final-year nursing students. Participants also completed the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale and Student Survey of Spiritual Care to assess construct validity. Internal reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and test-retest reliability was assessed at 1 week. Principal component analysis was used and the 68-item Spiritual Care-Giving Scale was reduced to 35-items. Results 745 (out of 1204) students completed the survey giving a 61.9% response rate. A 5-factor solution explaining 61.2% of the variance was supported. Cronbach's alpha of the 35-item scale was 0.86 and test-retest reliability was stable over time (r = 0.811). Concurrent validity with the Spirituality and Spirituality Care Rating scale (r = 0.587, p < 0.01) and Student Survey of Spiritual Care (r = 0.507, p = 0.01) showed significant correlation. Conclusion The Spiritual Care-Giving Scale was found to be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the multifaceted perspectives of spirituality and spiritual care in practice by students. Further testing of this scale is required with other student populations and clinicians.