Testing the Impact of Entrepreneurship Education on Business, Engineering and Arts Science Students Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour: A Comparative Study

摘要

Using the theory of planned behaviour, the study tested the impact of entrepreneurship education on business, engineering and arts and science students. The study adopted a pretest-post-test (timel, tl and time2, t2) to measure the change of attitudes and intentions over a period of six months. The participants who took entrepreneurship as a compulsory or elective course within their curriculum are totally 450. To measure attitude, the subjective norm, and perceived bahavioural control, the study adopted a measure proposed by Kolvereid (1996a). For the intention to become self-employed, the study adopted a 3-item measure of career intention, proposed by Kolvereid (1996a), which captures the intention of an individual to start a business. The results showed that the post-programme mean values of subjective norm, attitude towards self-employment, perceived behavioural control and intention towards self-employment increased in relation to the preprogramme ones. But the mean difference value in all four variables is higher for business students when compared to the other two students groups.