Introduction: During the study period, students should achieve an appropriate level of moral development and make
the right moral decisions by starting the clinical work. The aim of this study was done to determine the level of moral development of nursing students and the effective factors on it.
Materials & Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 2017 on 188 nursing students of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences. Sampling was performed by convenience sampling method. The Kelberg Moral
Evolution Questionnaire with 95% reliability, was used to collect data. This questionnaire includes 6 scenarios on the subject of infants with severe anomalies, drug coercion, adults' demand for death, introduction of a new nurse and the patients in the late stages of the disease. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 18 and descriptive and analytical statistical tests.
Results: In this study, 32 nursing students (17.02%) were at the pre-customary level, 61 nursing students (32.44%) at the customary level, 81 nursing students (43.08%) at the post-customary level and 14 nursing students (7.44 %) were at the level of clinical considerations. Also, the mean score of moral thinking of the participants in the study was 42.55 ± 5.54 and the mean score of clinical considerations was 20.06 ± 3.83.
Conclusion: The present study showed that despite the presence of more than half of the students were in customary
and post customary levels, a considerable number of them were still at low levels of moral development. Therefore, nursing administrators should pay more attention to the moral education of nursing students.