Development and Validation of Entrepreneurship Education Interest Inventory (EEII) for Colleges of Education in North Eastern Nigeria

This study developed and validated Entrepreneurship Education Interest Inventory (EEII) in Colleges of education in North-Eastern Nigeria. The study used instrumentation as its research design. The population of the study consists of all NCE II students of schools of vocational and technical education from six colleges of education, one from each state of the region which was exactly 2898 students. Samples of 952 students were randomly selected from the study area using stratified random sampling. Hidi and Renninger's (2006) four-phase model of interest development was used to serve as theoretical basis that inform and guided the process of development and validation of the interest inventory. The study reviewed several empirical studies conducted for development and validation of instruments. Four objectives, three research questions and one hypothesis were used for the study. The instrument revealed reasonable psychometric properties in term of construct validity, reliability and standard error of measurement. Construct validity was determined using factor analysis and Average variance extracted. The result of the factor analysis confirmed the loading of the variables to the four factors as propounded by Hidi Renninger. The EEII has evidence of convergent construct validity among five items each for the four factors (Knowledge, Engagement, Emotion and Value) with average variance extracted of 0.8008, 0.7948, 0.7702, and 0.77 respectively. The instrument has high reliability index estimated to be .878 using Cronbach's Alpha. The instrument also has a standard error of measurement (SEM) of 4.410771. The research has found a significant relationship between interest in entrepreneurship education and academic achievement in entrepreneurship education in the study area with Pearson’s correlation of 0.378 with significant value of 0.001 at 0.01 level of significance. The hypothesis “there is no significant relationship between interest in entrepreneurship education and academic achievement in entrepreneurship education in colleges of education in north Eastern Nigeria” was therefore rejected based on the significant value of 0.001 (highly significant at ˂0.05)