AN EXAMINATION OF HELP-SEEKING IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
Open Access
- Author:
- Reeves, Philip M
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Education
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 25, 2016
- Committee Members:
- Rayne Audrey Sperling, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Rayne Audrey Sperling, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Robert James Stevens, Committee Member
Sarah Elizabeth Zappe, Committee Member
Thomas Litzinger, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Help-seeking
Self-regulated Learning
Entrepreneurship Education - Abstract:
- This dissertation expanded help-seeking research into entrepreneurship education and addressed understudied areas of help-seeking research. Researchers have commonly used Likert scales to measure help-seeking tendencies in many studies. However, the existing scales of executive help-seeking have been unable to distinguish executive help-seeking (seeking an answer from an external source) from avoidant help-seeking (not seeking help when help is needed) in academic contexts. Therefore, in the first study, a new scale that measured executive help-seeking is created to reflect the positive aspects of executive help-seeking, which may be more evident in entrepreneurship education. Results from the study provided two types of validity evidence to suggest that the Pragmatic Executive Help-seeking scale measures a distinct element of help-seeking. The second study continues to provide a foundation for studying help-seeking in entrepreneurship education. A majority of help-seeking research has considered an individual’s help-seeking tendencies to be fairly consistent within a given environment and has not examined how different problems may influence help-seeking behavior. However, the type of problem (i.e. interpersonal vs. technological) likely influences help-seeking behavior. Since little research exists about the types of problems that arise when working on projects within entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial students are interviewed about their experiences in Study 2. The results indicate that students encountered several different types of problems including: cultural problems; problems evaluating or integrating information; problems obtaining or managing resources and finances; problems during the idea generation process; legal problems; problems managing or working with teammates; problems arising from a lack of prior knowledge; problems with technology; and problems managing time. The results from Study 2 inform the creation of an instrument containing general problem scenarios that can be used to examine help-seeking intentions at a problem level. The third study utilizes the scale and the instrument that were developed in the previous studies to test for differences in help-seeking tendencies and intention between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial students. Additionally, analyses examine how the perception of problems’ characteristics (i.e. problem severity, difficulty, novelty, etc.) impacts students’ intention to seek help. The results of Study 3 indicate that when holding other characteristics constant, confidence in ability to overcome a problem significantly predicted help-seeking intention across all the problem scenarios. Also, entrepreneurial students had a higher intention to seek help when compared to non-entrepreneurial students.