Entrepreneurship traits among engineering students: Instrument development and validation procedure using structural equation modeling

Abstract

To meet the demand for a sustainable global economic development and challenges, it is crucial for engineers to possess entrepreneurship traits on top of their technical competency. In understanding the entrepreneurship traits specifically among the engineering students in Malaysia, limited studies are available as compared to the business students. In contrast, the European and western countries had long pursued the interest in measuring entrepreneurship traits among engineering students. In view of this situation in Malaysia, a measuring instrument was developed and assessed for reliability using the exploratory factor analysis procedure. Quantitative data was collected from 346 engineering students using structured survey. Based on the reliability testing, the final instrument obtained comprised of nine (9) items yielding two (2) dimensions that is perseverance (6 items) and social & cultural awareness (3 items). This study described the results of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) process, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and finally the structural equation model for entrepreneurship traits construct.