*STUDENT ATTITUDES, INTERESTS AND KNOWLEDGE TOWARDS
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: OUTCOMES OF UNDERGRADUATE BASIC
ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAM
Nazifah Mustaffha
Faculty of Management & Muamalah, Kolej Univ. Islam Antarabangsa Selangor
[email protected]
Rapiah Mohd Zaini
Researcher, Stuttgart Germany
[email protected]
Abstract
Entrepreneurship has become a widely acceptable course in the higher learning institutions in
Malaysia. However, there was lack of local research that studies effect of the course on the
students who participate in it. This study examines the student outcomes on the attitude and
interest as well as entrepreneurship knowledge after participating in the undergraduate basic
entrepreneurship program organized by Kolej Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Selangor
(KUIS) in November 2007. Using developed questionnaire, survey has been conducted
among participants of the program before (pre) and after (post) the program. Data collected
was analyzed using a paired samples t-test. Generally, the findings of the study show that
there was a significant increase in the student attitude and knowledge towards
entrepreneurship as a result of their participation in the program.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship program, interest, attitude and
knowledge
1. Introduction and Background of the Study
Entrepreneur has become a widely acceptable profession in Malaysia. In line with the calls
from the Malaysian government to generate more entrepreneurs locally and internationally,
higher learning institutions in Malaysia have started to offer entrepreneurship courses and
programs to their students. Moreover, many other government institutions like Majlis
Amanah Rakyat (MARA) and Institut Keusahawanan Negara (INSKEN) have embarked in
providing entrepreneurship courses and programs to the public as well as fresh graduates in
Malaysia who wants to be entrepreneur to achieve the national mission in generating more
entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs creates job for others. They introduce new inventions, new products and
services. They significantly contribute to the growth of the economy of the country. As in
Malaysia, the importance of these entrepreneurs clearly seen in recent years when there was a
slight hiccup in the employability of graduates in the market. Difficulties in finding job let
graduates to become entrepreneur.
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Based on this believe, Kolej Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Selangor has decided to introduce
an entrepreneurship education programs, jointly organized with Majlis Amanah Rakyat
(MARA) for their students two years ago. For a start, the program is offered to the final year
diploma students in the Faculty of Management and Muamalah. However, the program is
also open to the diploma and bachelor students of other faculties but limited to the vacancy.
The program is conducted every year. In other words, it becomes annual year event of the
college. Due to its benefits and knowledge, in the future, the committee of the program plans
to open the programs to all students of the college.
2. Literature Review
Research in entrepreneurship education has received much attention from the researchers
lately. The research has been conducted in various areas of the subjects, ranging from the
definition of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship (Gustoff, 1993), to the understanding of the
role played by entrepreneurs (Kourilsky, 1995; Clayton-Code, 2001 and Matlay, H, 2005),
entrepreneurship education (Klandt, 2004 and Co & Mitchell, 2006), impact of the programs
(Chamey & Libecap, 1999 and Clayton-Code, 2002) and the effectiveness of the programs
(Abdullah, 1997; Kolvereid & Moen, 1997 & Henry, 2000 and Matlay, H, 2006).
However, for this study, our intention is to examine student’s knowledge and attitude towards
entrepreneurship before and after the program. Results of the program will become valuable
input to the committee of the program in assessing the worthiness of the program. Previous
study in this kind of research has been conducted in Kentucky, US by Clayton-Code (2002).
By using a questionnaire distributed prior and after the program, she found out that students
who participate in entrepreneurial education programs have benefited from the exposure to
economic content and have increased positive attitudes of their abilities, particularly towards
entrepreneurship. They are more able to recognize the contributions of entrepreneurs and are
more able to foster and value idea generation (Code, 2002).
Ede, Ghagaba and Catces (1998) studied on students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship
education using a survey of African American students. They found out students with family
background of entrepreneurs had a more positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. There
were also positive correlation between student’s grade point average and ages with the desire
for students to start up their businesses.
A study conducted by National Foundation of Teaching, US (2002) revealed positive results
of students belief in their entrepreneurship skills and knowledge. Before the program, only
about 20% of participants believe in such skills. However, the program was seen positively
influence students belief in entrepreneurship abilities.
3. Research Questions and Hypotheses
The study was conducted based on two research questions: (i) was there a significant
difference in the mean student scores on the attitude and interests of the students between the
pre-test and post-test. Secondly, was there a significant difference in the mean student scores
on the entrepreneurial knowledge between the pre-test and post-test.
The two research questions above lead to the following null hypotheses: (i) there will be no
significant difference in the mean student scores on the attitude and interests of the students
between the pre-test and post-test; (ii) there will be no significant difference in the mean
student scores on the entrepreneurial knowledge between the pre-test and post-test.
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4. Questionnaire, Sampling Design and Analysis of Data
A three-page questionnaire was prepared, and administered to the participants of the
program, who are students of the college. The questionnaire was divided into three parts: A,
B and C. Part A indicates respondents’ demographic. Part B indicates interest or attitude of
respondents towards entrepreneurship and Part C indicates entrepreneurship knowledge of
the respondents.
151 students (62% of participants) completed the questionnaire before and after the program.
Of the total responses originally received, 31 were dropped from analysis for reason such as
incompleteness of response or lack of either pre- or post-response. Thus, 120 responses were
retained for the analysis.
The data was then analyzed using a paired sample t-test. The procedure was applied
separately to the pre-test and post-test results on the same group of students.
The paired sample t-test was used in determining whether or not the difference between the
means of two occasions (before or pre-test and after or post-test) of the data is significant
(Pallant, 2004). Simultaneously, the test was used to analyze the student’s responses to both
(i) the interest- as well as attitudinal-based and (ii) knowledge-based questions.
5. Results
This section covers the results of both descriptive and statistical tests performed by using ttest.
5.1 Descriptive Statistics of the Respondents
The following section discusses the descriptive statistics of students who participate in the
survey.
As presented in Table 1, the major sample students come from students doing Diploma in
Finance and Islamic Banking (30%), followed by Diploma in Human Resource Management
(29.2%), Diploma in Business Management (18.3%), Diploma in Accountancy (7.5%) and
Diploma in Economy (5%). Out of this number, 19 students (15.8%) are male and 101
students (84.2%) are female. They are all final year students, either from term 5 or term 6.
Table 1: Demographic Profile by Field of Study
Field of study
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Finance & Islamic Banking
Human Resource Management
Business management
Accountancy
Economy
Total
No of
student
s
36
35
22
21
6
120
%
30.0%
29.2%
18.3%
17.5%
5.0%
100%
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5.2 Results of T-Test
A paired samples t-test shows that there were significant changes in the attitude of the
students after attending the course when the mean scores for questions 1, 2, 4 and 5 on
attitude increase significantly in the post-tests. Specifically, there were statistically significant
increases in the (i) interest scores before (M = 3.92) to after the course (M = 4.18), (ii)
ambition scores before (M = 3.96) and after (M = 4.2), (iii) meeting the entrepreneur scores
before (M = 4.18) and after (M = 4.38) and (iv) knowing entrepreneurs scores before (M =
3.21) and after (M = 3.73). The mean scores and significance level for each item were shown
in Table 1 and Table 2 below:
Table 1: Mean Scores of the Pre- and Post-tests
Question
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q5
Q6
Q7
Q8
Q9
Q10
Markah
Pre-test
3.92
3.96
4.26
4.18
3.21
4.19
4.51
4.81
4.11
4.63
6.64
Mean
Post-test
4.18
4.21
4.34
4.38
3.73
4.17
4.46
4.68
4.23
4.46
7.07
Table 2: Paired Samples t-Test Results
Sig. Level
Pair 1
Pair 2
Pair 3
Pair 4
Pair 5
Pair 6
Pair 7
Pair 8
Pair 9
Pair 10
Pair 11
B1 & B1post
B2 & B2post
B3 & B3post
B4 & B4post
B5 & B5post
B6 & B6post
B7 & B7post
B8 & B8post
B9 & B9post
B10 & B10post
K/ge & K/gepost
0.000
0.000
0.205
0.002
0.000
0.794
0.448
0.020
0.150
0.018
0.004
In addition to the attitudinal results, the t-test for both pre-test and post-test also show
that there was significant increase in the level of students’ knowledge on entrepreneurship
after they have attended the basic entrepreneurship course. This is shown when the paired-
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samples t-test show that there was statistically significant increase in the total score before (M
= 6.64) and after the course (M = 7.07) with significance level, p < 0.05.
6. Research Findings and Conclusion
This study reports the results of a study, which examined the student attitude and knowledge
towards entrepreneurship prior and after attending the Basic Undergraduate Entrepreneurship
Program. The results show that there were significant increases in the means of some of the
attitudinal questions as well as the overall mean scores on the entrepreneurship knowledge
among the students before and after they attended the program. The results therefore nullify
the null hypothesis that there will be no significant difference in the mean student scores on
the attitude and interests of the students between the pre-test and post-test.
Specifically, the significant increases were resulted on the interest, ambition, meeting the
entrepreneur and knowing the entrepreneurs. In short, the results indicated that after
participating in the program, the students were motivated to be an entrepreneur or at least
interested to know about entrepreneur and entrepreneurship in the future. However, these
results cannot be generalized, since the significant increases were shown on only 40% of the
interests and attitudinal items stated in the questionnaire.
Meanwhile, the significant increase in the means scores of the knowledge-based questions
indicated that the program has successfully increased the entrepreneurship knowledge among
the students. Again, the result has invalidated the null hypothesis that there will be no
significant difference in the mean student scores on the entrepreneurial knowledge between
the pre-test and post-test. Nevertheless, the increase in knowledge alone will not necessarily
be a motivating factor for the students to get involved in entrepreneurship in the future. This
is evidenced when most of the mean scores on the attitudinal and interest-based items
discussed above were not significantly increase in the post-test.
In general, the significant differences in the scores before and after the participation in the
program do not necessarily indicate that the entrepreneurship course has caused the increase
in attitudinal and interest as well as entrepreneurial knowledge scores. In other words, the
contents or modules of the program alone do not necessarily motivate the students to get
interested in entrepreneurship. There might be other factor(s) that is (are) not taken into
consideration in the test. For example, family background and the environment surrounding
the students themselves might influence their interests towards entrepreneurship.
7. Limitations and Future Research
The findings and conclusions discussed in the previous section are subject to a number of
limitations. Firstly, it must be emphasized that the results of this study should not be
generalized to students of the college, since they are excluded from the population. We are
distributing the survey to the participants of the program only.
Secondly, this study is limited to a specific event that was entrepreneurship program
conducted in November 2007. Future research may examine the participants in the same
program but over a period of more than one event to ascertain the trend of the data and
results.
In the future, the research should cover the other factor(s) that determine(s) the success and
failures of the program as well as the outcome of the program on the graduates after several
years attending the program.
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References
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