Laser-driven plasma soft X-ray laser, XRL, at a wavelength of 13.9 nm is generated from nickel-like silver plasmas. The polarization state at an end station is considered to be vertically linearly polarized due to the reflections at some Mo/Si multilayer mirrors installed in the XRL beamline, but the detail has not been verified experimentally. To evaluate and control the polarization state, a compact polarization analysis apparatus to adapt for the XRL end station is developed. Two Mo/Si multilayer mirrors are fabricated and the polarization properties are evaluated by using synchrotron radiation, SR. As a preliminary test of the apparatus, the reflectivity of the multilayer is measured by the XRL and it shows good agreement with that by SR. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.