Factors influencing entrepreneurship among high vocational certificate students under Office of the Vocational Education Commission in Chiang Mai Province
Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to 1) develop and validate the measurement model of entrepreneurship among high vocational certificate students. 2) develop and validate the structural equation model of factors influencing entrepreneurship among high vocational certificate Students. The research samples were 550 high vocational certificate students under the office of the vocational education commission in Chiang Mai selected sampled using simple random sampling. The research instruments were 1) Questionnaire with 29 of entrepreneurship items measuring risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness and need for achievement. The discriminations (Item-Total Correlation) were between 0.405 and 0.715 and the t-test values (Independent sample t-test) were between 3.368-9.299, each item being significantly at the .05 level. The reliabilities (α) each variable were 0.817, 0.770, 0.818, 0.895 respectively. 2) Questionnaire with 33 items measuring factors influencing entrepreneurship categorized as attitudes toward entrepreneurship, social support, self-efficacy and entrepreneurship education. The discriminations (Item-Total Correlation) were between 0.497-0.788 and the t-test values (Independent sample t-test) were between 3.049-9.262, each item being significantly at the .05 level. The reliabilities (α) of each factor were 0.884, 0.865, 0.921, 0.920 respectively. The data analyzes employed descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Research Results as below 1. The results of the confirmatory factors revealed that the model fit the empirical data and accurate measurement. The entrepreneurship measurement model consists 4 factors and 10 indicators namely 1) risk taking, it contains 2 indicators, namely enterprising characteristic and tolerance of ambiguity 2) innovativeness which has 2 indicators, namely creativeness and using technology 3) proactiveness consists indicators, namely planning ahead, opportunity Seeking and competitiveness lastly need for achievement consisting of 3 indicators, namely goal orientation, perseverance and personal responsibility. The model development and validation resulted in x2=22.777, df=16, p-value = 0.1198, CFI= 0.998, TLI = 0.993, RMSEA = 0.028, SRMR = 0.014. It was found that the first-order and second-order factor loadings (β) were between 0.666 - 0.846 and 0.934 - 0.960, respectively. The variable with the highest factor loading were need for achievement (β = 0.960, R2 = 0.921) 2. The structural equation model of factors influencing entrepreneurship among high vocational certificate Students was valid and to the empirical data. The model indicated that the Chi-square goodness of fit test was X2 = 25.694, df=20, p-value = 0.1762, CFI=0.999, TLI= 0.995, RMSEA = 0.023, SRMR=0.059 The variables directly influencing entrepreneurship were social support (β =0.562**), followed by entrepreneurship education (β = 0.513*) and attitudes toward entrepreneurship (β = 0.469**) respectively. The variables indirectly influencing entrepreneurship were entrepreneurship education (β = 0.308**) followed social support (β = 0.226**).The models variables account for 71.10 percent of the variance in entrepreneurship.