Evaluation of Entrepreneurship Training Program: Predisposition and Impact on Entrepreneurial intentions

Do entrepreneurship education programmes influence participants' attitudes and perceptions towards entrepreneurial intentions and therefore the entrepreneurial behaviour itself? Researchers and entrepreneurship education stakeholders alike (public institutions, academic authorities, teachers, etc.) have been looking into this question for quite a while, with a view to validating the efficacy of such programmes. The authors of this paper propose to operationalize the concept of entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents in an attempt to answer this question. A study to measure the effects of an entrepreneurship education programme (EEP) and the factors that may influence the participants in this type of programme is presented. Our main research results show that the positive effects of an EEP are all the more marked where previous entrepreneurial exposure has been weak or inexistent. Conversely, for those students who had previously been exposed to entrepreneurship, the results highlight significant counter-effects.