Psychosocial determinants of entrepreneurial intention among final year students of the faculty of education, University Of Calabar, Calabar

Abstract

The need for entrepreneurship development in Nigeria is higher now than it has ever been in the history of the country. This is so  because jobs have become illusive and there is growing unemployment in the country, which has made the Government to encourage graduates to become entrepreneurs and employers of labour instead of employees. This study is therefore aimed at assessing the
psychosocial determinants of entrepreneurial intention among final year students of the Faculty of Education, University of Calabar, Calabar. Accordingly, three hypotheses were formulated; the survey research design was used and data collection was carried out using a self-administered questionnaire on a sample of 180 final year students, which were randomly selected from the twelve departments in the Faculty of Education of the University. Descriptive statistics and One-way Analysis of Variance were used to analyse the results and test relationships between variables with the aid of the SPSS software. The results showed that their propensity to take risks influenced significantly the students‘ entrepreneurial intention. However, family background and locus of control did not have any  significant influence on their entrepreneurial intention. It is recommended amongst others that government should device ways of galvanising the students‘ positive entrepreneurial intention into job creation including running a compulsory training programme for all University students on entrepreneurship.

Keywords – psychosocial determinants, entrepreneurial intention, final year students.