College students' entrepreneurial mindset: Educational experiences override gender and major

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has been popularly adopted in higher education contexts. Although evidence-based implementations of such education are widely acknowledged as beneficial, valid assessments of it are sparse. One possible outcome of entrepreneurship education is a change in students' entrepreneurial mindset, which can be measured by the recently validated College Students' Entrepreneurial Mindset Scale (CS-EMS). However, this scale awaits evidence regarding measurement invariance. This study aims to (1) examine measurement invariance of the CS-EMS; (2) compare the latent and observed means across groups based on gender, major, and educational experiences; and (3) investigate the conditional effects of the three grouping variables. Using data from 317 Korean college students' survey responses, we conducted sequential tests of factorial invariance and latent mean comparisons using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis. Additionally, the conditional effects of the gender, major, and educational experiences were tested by structural equation modeling. The results indicate that strict invariance held for the groups compared by either gender or educational experiences, while scalar invariance held between the engineering and non-engineering groups. While the male, engineering, and educational experience groups generally scored higher on both the latent and observed sub-scales, the results of the conditional effects of grouping variables indicated that educational experiences mattered most. One practical implication for the educators is that the CS-EMS is a promising assessment tool for addressing the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, especially when the targeted educational goals are any of its sub-constructs.