How to assess innovation competence in services: The case of university students

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to review the concept of innovation capacity in higher education students, proposing constructs for a measurement model of innovation capacity as a second-order formative model and validation of measurement scales with 332 students from a Spanish university. The proposed model can be considered to meet, in general, the criteria for content validity and the validation tests suitable for the formative model. Thus, the academic community can benefit from a validated measurement instrument that can be used in the future to collect data on dependent and independent variables in causal models. The paper also presents a contribution for teaching professionals interested in measuring the degree of development of innovation competence in their students.