Testing the impact of entrepreneurship education on business, engineering and arts and science students using the theory of planned behaviour

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to test the impact of entrepreneurship education on business, engineering and arts and science students using the theory of planned behaviour. The study adopted a pre-test–post-test (time 1, t1 and time 2, 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 450 in total. To measure attitude, the subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, the study adopted a measure proposed by Kolvereid (1996b). For the intention to become self-employed, the study adopted a three-item measure of career intention, proposed by Kolvereid (1996b), 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 pre-programme ones. But the me...