2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) is a concept rooted in self-efficacy theory and is particularly relevant in the field of entrepreneurship education. Described as an individual’s confidence in performing entrepreneurship-related tasks, ESE, plays a crucial role in assessment of student outcomes in entrepreneurship education programs. Particularly, ESE aids in assessing students’ confidence to initiate and successfully execute tasks that they are exposed to in their programs. Additionally, since ESE arises from the intricate interaction between an individual and their environment, assessment of ESE provides insights on the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that influence a person's choice to engage in entrepreneurial endeavors. As entrepreneurship education continues to grow in engineering education, it is important to use valid and reliable measures for rigorous program assessment, evaluation, and research. Due to its emergence in business fields, majority of the instruments have been developed and validated among business students and business personnel. This paper presents early-stage results validating ESE scale among student populations enrolled in engineering entrepreneurship programs.

The data was collected in two phases from students enrolled in an entrepreneurship course offered through the College of Engineering at a large research institution. The study participants were asked to respond on a survey before and after taking the course. A total of 252 and 230 students completed the survey in the first and second phase respectively. The participants responded to McGee’s Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy scale which contains 19 questions, on 5-point Likert-type scale (no confidence at all, little confident, somewhat confident, confident, and very confident). These 19 questions measure five overarching factors pertinent to different entrepreneurship tasks - searching, planning, marshaling, implementing people and implementing finance.

To validate the ESE scale, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed using principal axis factoring method for factor extraction on both phase 1 and 2 data. Oblimin rotation with Kaiser normalization was used for factor rotation. Factors were initially identified based on an examination of the scree plot and were further confirmed through Minimum Average Partial analysis and Kaiser Criterion. Phase 1 EFA resulted in the identification of three distinct factors. Notably, the factor analysis conducted in Phase 2 yielded dissimilar results when compared to Phase 1, revealing the emergence of four distinct factors. We discuss these findings in regard with methodological implications for survey validation, and emerging subfield of entrepreneurship education in engineering education research.