Factors affecting students’ entrepreneurial intentions of Polytechnic Institute of Setubal: a cognitive approach

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays entrepreneurship is an important option for students. Some researchers considered that the decision to become an entrepreneur involves an elaborate mental process. This study tries to understand this mental process following the cognitive approach through the application of Entrepreneurial Intentions Questionnaire (EIQ) to students from College of Business and Administration (ESCE), Polytechnic Institute of Setubal (IPS). The main purpose of this study is to understand the student’s entrepreneurial intentions, considering the influence of social and skills perception. Additionally the study tries to understand the influence of gender, age, labour experience and self-employment experience in entrepreneurial students’ intentions. To achieve this objectives, it was applied a quantitative approach. The statistical techniques used were factor analysis for the identification of factors, as well as, correlation analysis and t-test for hypotheses confirmation. This study allowed the confirmation of the findings of previous studies concerning the relationship between the entrepreneurial intention and the attitudes toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. These results also revealed that age and gender are significantly correlated to entrepreneurial intentions.