Purpose: In this paper, we describe the status of students' understanding using "community inspection guidelines". Then we considered merits, limits and practical application of these "community inspection guidelines". Methods: The subjects were 101 students in a public health nursing course; the term of study was one year. Ninety-six subjects who answered all questions in the "community inspection guidelines" (effective response rate 95.0%) were analyzed by factor analysis. Then we calculated the average for the factors extracted by factor analysis. Further we analyzed the relationship between the "guidelines" and existing materials by Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: We extracted 4 factors, the appearance of the street, the appearance of people, politics/religion/health and social support, by factor analysis (cumulative contribution rate 63.3%). The high scoring factors were the appearance of the street, the appearance of people and social support. The low scoring factor was politics/religion/health. The average score using the "community inspection guidelines" was significantly higher among those who considered the connection between the "community inspection guidelines" and the existing materials. Discussion: We suggested that the "community inspection guidelines" were an effective checklist for understanding the community and that "community inspection guidelines" are a necessary and useful device. Further, we suggested that we should provide concrete advice to students when they use the "community inspection guidelines".