Measuring entrepreneurial self-efficacy to understand the impact of creative activities for learning innovation

Abstract It has been argued that if increased entrepreneurial activity is the outcome objective, then self-efficacy provides a legitimate and robust construct that can be used to evaluate the impact of entrepreneurial education (Barakat, McIellan, & Winfield, 2010). This is because self-efficacy influences the motivation and ability to engage in specific activities ( Bandura, 1977 ) and is a strong, necessary condition of creative productivity, and in discovering new knowledge ( Bandura, 1997 ). Although the concept of self-efficacy can be used as a promising tool to understand creativity and has been practically tested by Tierney and Farmer (2002), entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) as a multi-dimensional construct remains under theorized. The aim of this paper is to provide details of a study and methodology in order to offer an example of a usable survey tool plus preliminary results from the data collected through a specific project called CAL4INO.Creative Activities in Learning for Innovation (CAL4INO) is a European Union funded project that focuses primarily on identifying the impact of different types of learning activities on the innovation potential of participants. CAL4INO aims to review different education and training methods and explore the impact different programmes have on entrepreneurship and innovation both in the short term and long term. As part of this research a survey tool has been validated that measures different factors of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE).Further, the relationship between different dimensions of ESE are considered to build a better understanding of the multi-dimensional structure of ESE.