The central purpose of the present study is to translate the theory about public service motivation into a measurement scale to facilitate research. Several design considerations were important in developing the scale. Construct validity, that is the correspondence between the conceptual and operational definitions of public service motivation (Schwab 1980), was paramount. Another priority was unidimensionality of the component constructs that made up the scale (Anderson and Gerbing 1988). A final consideration was parsimony. The more concise the measurement instrument, the more easily and frequently it could be used.