Entrepreneurial intent and entrepreneurial identity of University of Malta students and graduates

Abstract

This study investigated entrepreneurial intent and entrepreneurial identity among undergraduate students and graduate from the University of Malta. Entrepreneurial intent is a very important metric in entrepreneurship research as it links enterprising individuals with the discovery of new business opportunities and with the exploitation of these ideas through new business ventures (Vesalainen & Pihkala, 1999). Entrepreneurial identity is also an important factor in entrepreneurship as it is linked to the stage were potential entrepreneurs move from being "'dreamers' to action" (Farmer, Yao and Kung-Mcintyre, 2011). A mixed method approach was adopted for this research, whereby both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis were used, in two phases of data collection and analysis. The first phase of the study aimed at obtaining a snapshot view of the entrepreneurial intent and entrepreneurial identity of students at University of Malta. To this end, quantitative analysis was carried out on an online questionnaire-based dataset that had been gathered in October 2010, as part of an international research project on the impact of education on entrepreneurship, coordinated by researchers from Illinois State University and University of Wisconsin in collaboration with various partners around the world including University of Malta. In this study, entrepreneurial intent and entrepreneurial identity were measured using Likert scales based on the work of Thompson (2009) an<l Farmer, Yao and Kung-Mcintyre (2009) respectively. The local dataset comprising of 88 respondents was made available to the author of this dissertation, and permission was granted for the data to be used for this purpose.