ENTREPRENEURSHIP COMPETENCY REQUIRED BY BUSINESS EDUCATION STUDENTS IN ESTABLISHING SMALL SCALE VENTURES IN OVIA NORTH EAST LGA OF EDO STATE

ABSTRACT

This study determined the entrepreneurship competencies required by business education students for establishing small scale ventures in Ovia North East LGA of Edo State. Five research questions were raised to guide the study and one null and one alternate hypothesis was formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study employed descriptive survey research design. The population for the study comprised One hundred and forty three (143) 400 level Business education students. The sample size of the Study was made up of One hundred (100) final year Business education students, using the purposive sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was structured questionnaire, titled “Entrepreneurship Competencies Required by Business Education Students for Establishing Small scale ventures in Ovia North East LGA of Edo State “ (ECRBESESSVQ)". The instrument was subjected to face validity by the researcher's supervisor and two other experts in the Department of Vocational and Technical Education. The reliability of the research instrument was determined by using internal consistency method via Cronbach Alpha statistics. The research instrument was administered to twenty (20) students Who were not part of the sample used for the study but were part of the population of the study. Their responses were analyzed and a co-efficient of 0.84 was obtained which showed that the instrument was reliable. The data collected were analyzed using mean (X) and Standard Deviation (SD) while the hypothesis was tested using two sample independent t-test. The findings showed that Communication, Business planning, Networking and relationship building , Financial literacy and Market research analysis competencies are required by business education students for establishing small scale ventures in Ovia North East LGA of Edo State to a high extent, and that there is no significance difference between the entrepreneurship competencies required by male and female business education students in establishing small ventures in Ovia North East LGA of Edo State. The study therefore concluded that xiii entrepreneurship competencies are needed to be possessed by business education students for establishing SSVs. Based on the above conclusion, the study therefore recommended among others that there should be establishment of partnership with local businesses and industry associations to provide students with exposure to real life business environment.