The Socio-educational, Psychological and Family-Related Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Intentions among Spanish Youth

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

see separate doc.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for the prompt review of our original submission and for this opportunity to revise and resubmit our paper. In this rebuttal letter, we respond to each point raised by the reviewers. We would like to thank all of you very much for your constructive feedback which has clearly helped us improve the manuscript. In addition to addressing the specific comments raised by the reviewers, the paper has been checked by a native English professor.

We hope you will find that the present version of the manuscript is much improved and, hopefully, worthy a publication in such a respected outlet as Sustainability.

Below are our detailed responses to each comment provided by the Reviewer:

 Reviewer 1

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this paper. It is an interesting and urgent topic indeed. As the paper states, an early detection of entrepreneurial interests may be a good strategy for reinforcing young people’s initiatives and careers (in policy and education). Entrepreneurial interest and entrepreneurial intentions may well mitigate youth unemployment. I would like to make some suggestions regarding the scope of the paper, and to express some doubts regarding the methods, which I hope the authors can alleviate.

Thank you very much for your encouragement and constructive comments. We are glad that you find our paper well written and has the potential to contribute to relevant literatures. For your convenience, we include our response to each comment in italics. We hope that you will find our responses and revision satisfactory.

SCOPE

Regarding the scope of the paper, I want to suggest the authors to make some adaptations. The perspective of entrepreneurial intention (EI) is a valid and relevant one: EI is a rapidly evolving field of research, with an increasing number of studies using entrepreneurial intention as a powerful theoretical framework.

You state on l.70 that “young people are among those most affected by the crisis and imbalance of the economic system and they are frequently unaware of the opportunities offered by eship…..” I think that a major contribution of the paper lies here. It is the most original (and convincing) argument underlining the paper. If I were the authors, I would reframe the paper, and put this more central.

We appreciate your suggestion and we are glad to read you find the perspective of entrepreneurial intention a valid and relevant one. We agree it is a rapidly evolving field of research in which entrepreneurial intention is a powerful theoretical framework. Following your suggestion, we have tried to make the argument you mention more central and underlined in this updated version of the paper. In doing so we have reframed parts of the paper, notably the conclusions, to focus more on how the results can be helpful to address the effects of the crisis and challenges to your people.

Additionally, the observations in lines 106 and beyond (the social, educational and psychological antecedents of EI, as well as entrepreneurial interest as a predictor), could make a nice contribution to the literature.

Thank you again for your positive view on our arguments. We have tried to emphasize in this updated version of the manuscript that we make a contribution to the literature by untangling the social, educational and psychological main characteristics of the sample related to EI.

The theoretical background offers some basic understanding of entrepreneurship. At times, it fails to refer to the original contributors, and instead makes reference to (policy?) studies in Spanish (for example ref. 72-74).

We are grateful for this remark. We apologize for the excessive use of references to studies in Spanish in the previous version of the paper. In this new version we have replaced them for the original contributors of trait theory (Kaufman, Weilsh & Bushmarin, 1995; Shane, Kolvereid, & Westhead, 1991; Hisrich, 2000; Rauch & Frese, 2007; Hisrich, Langan-Fox & Grant, 2007;) and of cognitive approach (Boucknooghe, Van den Broeck, Cools, & Vanderheyden, 2005; Neri & Watson, 2013; Mitchell, Busenitz, Lant, McDougall, Morse, Smith et al., 2002; Busenitz, West III, Shepherd, Nelson, Chandler & Zacharakis, 2003; Baron, 2006; Gilad, Kaish & Ronen, 1988).

 I would suggest the authors to consider to omit much of the (redundant) writings about entrepreneurship, and focus from the beginning on young people, and the known and unknown antecedents of EI, referring strongly to the work by Linan and Chen (as well as Alain Fayolle). In this case, however, the literature review needs to be reinforced.

The motivation for the study, expressed in l.173 and beyond, already touches upon such a strategic choice, but could become better recognized throughout the study (in the main argument within the introduction, in the literature review, etc.). The main motivation for the study lies in “the necessity of improving the field’s knowledge of the individual and contextual processes involved in the development of entrepreneurial initiative among young people”, specifically secondary school students. You do so by bringing “together two main lines of research in the study of entrepreneurial intention”.

Thank you also for this useful suggestion. We have tried to remove some redundant parts and focus on the aspects you mention. We have included the works by Linan and Chen (2013), Liñan (2008) and the ones by Fayolle (Fayolle, Gailly & Lassas-Clerc, 2006; Fayolle, 2013; Fayolle & Gailly, 2015; Fayolle & Liñan, 2014) and, as they fit perfectly the aim of our research, and we thank you for bringing them to our attention.

METHODS

The methods seem elaborated and well thought-over. The sample is appropriate and also a strength of the research. However, I have some fundamental questions related to the methods as well.

Thank you for your positive words, we are glad to read you think the methods are elaborated and well thought-over and that the sample is appropriate and a strength of this research. We appreciate your subsequent constructive comments which have helped us improve the paper.

A first question relates to the analysis. Is PCA the appropriate analysis? Principal component analysis is a statistical procedure that uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables called principal components (Wikipedia). I have the impression that the authors bring together quite a lot of individual items in such an analysis, and I am not convinced of the appropriateness of this strategy. Please, alleviate any doubts of readers by arguing better why this method is appropriate. You seem to result in (two) groups based on the respondents’ attributes. Why is cluster analysis then not applied? Moreover, if you want to explain the antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions, why not conducting a linear analysis ([ordinal] regression analysis)?

We thank the reviewer for his/her interesting reflection about the application of PCA. As the reviewer states, PCA consists of a rotation of the original axes that generates a new set of orthogonal axes. This well-known and widely-used technique has been previously and extensively applied to reduce the dimensionality of data for further processing. It is mainly because it obtains the best new axes in terms of minimization of the reconstruction error, as PCA is aimed at keeping the maximum variance of the data in the new derived axes. It is true, as the reviewer points out, that a clustering (or any other unsupervised exploratory) technique could have been used. However, authors think that PCA is much more informative for the given application. While the output of a clustering technique is just the cluster to which each data instance is assigned, PCA provides us with additional information in order to gain knowledge about the structure of the data. It can be seen in the Figure 2 of the paper, where it can be seen that group 1.2 is closer to the group 1.1 than group 2.1. That is, a global ordering of the obtained groups (and hence the data they contained) can be obtained by applying PCA.

On the other hand, when compared to regression analysis, Exploratory Projection Pursuits (EPP) in general and PCA in particular, aim at finding the better data projection (on reduced dimensionality). That is, these methods do not focus on relations (causality, moderation, etc.) between features in the original dataset, and try to reveal the structure of the whole dataset instead. In keeping with these ideas, PCA has been selected in present study as the most suitable method to discover the structure of the dataset under analysis.

We sincerely thank the reviewer for these suggestions and we have included them as interesting opportunities for further research in future studies to enlarge the findings and address additional research questions.

A second question relates to the use of the notion ‘moderating’, already in the title. As the authors know, in statistics and regression analysis, moderation occurs when the relationship between two variables depends on a third variable. A moderator is a variable that affects the strength of the relation between the predictor and criterion variable. I do not clearly observe if and how moderation techniques are being applied in the analysis.

Thank you for bringing up this issue to our attention. You are correct that it is not an accurate word for the title, since we are not conducting a moderation analysis. For this reason, in this updated version of the manuscript we have rewritten the title, which now reads as follows: “Entrepreneurial intentions among Spanish youth: entrepreneurial interest, socio-educational, psychological, and family factors”.

A third question (which is more an observation) relates to the fact that the authors seem to have single-item measures in their questionnaire, rather than multi-tem scales. In the literature, validated scales for EI have been developed. The use of a single-item measure could imply a severe weakness of the study, especially if it seeks to engage with the EI literature. The least that can be done is to recognize this as a limitation. But the authors will also need to argue that their measures are valid and reliable measures of EI (and entrepreneurial interest)

Thank you for bringing up this issue to our attention. In relation to the data of validity and reliability of the complete questionnaire, this instrument was validated through a pilot test conducted in eight Autonomous Communities of Spain and evaluated by 14 experts belonging to seven Spanish universities, which gave their approval for the final application. In addition, its reliability was contrasted in previous studies published by other authors in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals using this same questionnaire, such as:

Valdemoros-San-Emeterio MA, Sanz-Arazuri E, Ponce-de-León-Elizondo A. Digital Leisure and Perceived Family Functioning in Youth of Upper Secondary Education / Ocio digital y ambiente familiar en estudiantes de Educación Postobligatoria. Comunicar [Internet]. 2017; 25(50):99–107. Available from: https://www.revistacomunicar.com/index.php?contenido=detalles&numero=50&articulo=50-2017-09

Valdemoros-San-Emeterio MÁ, Ponce de León A, Gradaille R. Actividad Física de Ocio Juvenil y Desarrollo Humano. Rev Psicol del Deport. 2016; 25:2007–13.

            However, we acknowledge the limitations of the questionnaire, notably the single-item nature of the measures. We have added some discussion about this in the limitations section to recognize this shortcoming.

IN CONCLUSION

Overall, the paper could become a valuable contribution to the EI-literature, and as such reinforce some aspects of a sustainable society. The choice for submitting the paper to Sustainability is a valid one, but could be made more explicit. If the authors seek an alternative publication outlet, I would suggest them not to target entrepreneurship journals (mainly because of the weaker measurement), but a journal that is open for papers about the employability of young people.

We appreciate your constructive words and suggestions. We hope the paper can make a valuable contribution to the readership of Sustainability and we think your comments have helped us improve the paper to achieve it. In this new version we have added expanded the discussion on how our results contribute to a sustainable society. Specifically, we have added the following: “By unveiling the relevance of the internal locus of control, motivation, need for achievement, the search and identification of opportunities, autonomy and independence and self-efficacy, the results of the paper have important implications for multiple actors in charge of the sustainability of youth entrepreneurship in Spain. First, policy-makers such as the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and also the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport should take these results into consideration when designing and implementing programs to detect and support from an early stage entrepreneurial interest among students. In order to fully reap the expected benefits, such programs should also include a suitable training for teachers in which these capabilities are emphasized. In fact, the results highlight that training at school might not be enough, and instead suggest that learning should take place across boundaries and with interrelations with other agents in the society such as the family and professional associations. Further, universities should collaborate with commerce chambers, clusters, and professional networks in order to create sustainable opportunities for young people to overcome some of the challenges identified in this paper. For instance, these agents can promote the creation of incubators and institutions that facilitate access to funding (business angels, crowdsourcing…)”.

The paper is written in a clear manner. However, at times sentences do not convince. Two examples: l.42: “the need to overcome … problems currently experienced by the majority of companies.” This is an overstatement. l.44: “Recently, research… has gained momentum.” It is not so recent.

Thank for pointing these issues to our attention. We have corrected both sentences to make them more accurate. We now say in l.42: “…the need to overcome the constant and burgeoning economic problems currently experienced by many countries in terms of unemployment, economic growth, and innovation”. And we now say in l.44: “In the last decades, research interest in entrepreneurship has gained momentum…”

As parts of the literature could benefit strongly from additional work, and the methods need to be clarified (or even reconsidered), I propose a MAJOR REVISION before considering publication. I wish the authors the best of luck with the revision of the paper

Once again, we are extremely grateful for your insightful comments, which have been very valuable in improving the quality of our paper. We hope we have been able to address all your concerns adequately.

 Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

well written article with a reasonable sample size. I don’t know if the readers will find the topic interesting but I think it’s definitely publishable. I have no reservations from a methodological perspective.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you for the prompt review of our original submission and for this opportunity to revise and resubmit our paper. In this rebuttal letter, we respond to each point raised by the reviewers. We would like to thank all of you very much for your constructive feedback which has clearly helped us improve the manuscript. In addition to addressing the specific comments raised by the reviewers, the paper has been checked by a native English professor.

We hope you will find that the present version of the manuscript is much improved and, hopefully, worthy a publication in such a respected outlet as Sustainability.

Below are our detailed responses to each comment provided by the Reviewer:

 Reviewer 2
 

Thank you very much for your positive review of our work. We are glad that you find our paper well written and and with a reasonable sample size. We hope that, after including the constructive suggestions from Reviewer 1 and reviewer 3 the paper will look now even stronger and it will be of interest for readers at the journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Colleagues, 

The study examines the associations of the Spanish youth between interests in entrepreneurship as antecedents to entrepreneurial intention, and the principal variables that influence that intentions.

In my opinion the paper is generally interested and well-structured. It consists of the key sections which are necessary in this kind of research. However, below I put some specific comments, which could be helpful for authors to improve the issue quality.

In the section: Introduction the authors write that “in Spain the young people are affected by the crisis and imbalance of the economic system and they are frequently unaware of the opportunities offered by entrepreneurship as an increasingly accessible alternative”. It should be explained how are the research results connected with this problem? It seems to be good to add some recommendations coming out from the research which could be included in the section: conclusions.

In the section: theoretical background should be add some thesis regarding exactly the youth entrepreneurship. It would be better to show also some other research results. There are some papers dedicated to this problems such as for example the text: "Shaping of competencies of managers in academic incubators of entrepreneurship in Poland" Organizacija 47.1 (2014) and many others. They are mainly focused on individual youth entrepreneurship in different countries so it is easy to compare these problems for example and develop in this way the theoretical background for the paper.

In the section: Materials and Methods the authors should explain why do they present the research results from 2014? Do they have also any newer research to compare the results? It should be stated clearly why the authors used only one research method and why they did not they also used other methods (e.g. interviews) to follow the principle of triangulation and confirm the results of the research.

In the section: Conclusions it should be good to add some thesis about the expected impact of the research for the national entities responsible for the youth entrepreneurship in Spain, especially some recommendations for the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness which granted this research as well as for some other entities responsible for the young entrepreneurs support such as: universities, incubators, commerce chambers, clusters and networks. 

Good luck!

 Author Response

Thank you for the prompt review of our original submission and for this opportunity to revise and resubmit our paper. In this rebuttal letter, we respond to each point raised by the reviewers. We would like to thank all of you very much for your constructive feedback which has clearly helped us improve the manuscript. In addition to addressing the specific comments raised by the reviewers, the paper has been checked by a native English professor.

We hope you will find that the present version of the manuscript is much improved and, hopefully, worthy a publication in such a respected outlet as Sustainability.

Below are our detailed responses to each comment provided by the Reviewer:

 Reviewer 3

The study examines the associations of the Spanish youth between interests in entrepreneurship as antecedents to entrepreneurial intention, and the principal variables that influence that intentions.

In my opinion the paper is generally interested and well-structured. It consists of the key sections which are necessary in this kind of research. However, below I put some specific comments, which could be helpful for authors to improve the issue quality.

Thank you very much for your encouragement and constructive comments. We are glad that you find our paper interesting and well-structured. For your convenience, we include our response to each comment in italics. We hope that you will find our responses and revision satisfactory.

In the section: Introduction the authors write that “in Spain the young people are affected by the crisis and imbalance of the economic system and they are frequently unaware of the opportunities offered by entrepreneurship as an increasingly accessible alternative”. It should be explained how are the research results connected with this problem? It seems to be good to add some recommendations coming out from the research which could be included in the section: conclusions.

We are grateful for this suggestion. We agree that linking how our results are connected to this problem can improve the introduction. Following your suggestion, we have written the following in the conclusion: Young people who express a high interest in entrepreneurship as a vocational choice were a low percentage of the total population under study. These results, together with young people are among those most affected by the crisis and imbalance of the economic system and that they are frequently unaware of the opportunities offered by entrepreneurship make it urgent to take measures, first of all, educational.

In the section: theoretical background should be add some thesis regarding exactly the youth entrepreneurship. It would be better to show also some other research results. There are some papers dedicated to this problems such as for example the text: "Shaping of competencies of managers in academic incubators of entrepreneurship in Poland" Organizacija 47.1 (2014) and many others. They are mainly focused on individual youth entrepreneurship in different countries so it is easy to compare these problems for example and develop in this way the theoretical background for the paper.

Thank you for this suggestion and for the valuable and useful reference. We totally agree that referencing more works devoted to youth entrepreneurship can enhance this section and the one you provide fits perfectly. Therefore, in this updated version of the manuscript we now discuss and compare with the suggested paper and others. Specifically, we have added the following paragraph: “Additionally, in Spain and the European Union, young people are among those most affected by the crisis and imbalance of the economic system and they are frequently unaware of the opportunities offered by entrepreneurship as an increasingly accessible alternative [14]. In this sense, several investigations have focused on youth entrepreneurship. For example, Kurowska-Pysz [15] analyzed the effectiveness of Academic Incubators of Entrepreneurship (AIE) in Poland with a group of young people in secondary education and higher education. The aim was to promote managerial competencies in students and formulate recommendations in terms of the development of managerial skills or future entrepreneurs. Kurowska-Pysz [15] found that students who participated perceived the development of desirable traits and the strengthening of specific entrepreneurial and management competencies, which increased their motivation to start a business after leaving the incubator.

Similarly, Johansen [16] performed a quantitative study of former participants in Junior Achievement-Young Enterprise (JA-YE) Europe programs and he found that usually participants in entrepreneurship education programs are more likely to become entrepreneurs. The study of Finisterra do Paco et al. [17] showed at clear impact of general education on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity. This has led to an increased interest from researcher about entrepreneurship education programs. Furthermore, some works suggest the idea that early formal entrepreneurship education can have an impact on the attitudes of students, influencing them in the direction of their future career, increasing their propensity for entrepreneurship when they become adults [18, 19].”

In the section: Materials and Methods the authors should explain why do they present the research results from 2014? Do they have also any newer research to compare the results?

It should be stated clearly why the authors used only one research method and why they did not they also used other methods (e.g. interviews) to follow the principle of triangulation and confirm the results of the research.

We appreciate these comments related to the Materials and Methods. Regarding the year of the data, we work with data from 2014 as it is when the data was collected, but also because by following this procedure we are able to study comparable data coming from cohorts of students following the same educational plan. We have added to the paper that: “By employing data from this year, we are able to collect comparable data on students following the same educational law that was existing in Spain from 2006 to 2014. A new legislation was introduced the following year, although the complete implementation is expected to conclude in 2020”. However, we admit that this is also a limitation of our paper, which opens up exciting opportunities for further research. Thus, in the limitations of the study we have added: “Further, future studies could also analyze students following the new educational law passed in 2014 and implemented in the subsequent years, in order to compare the results between different cohorts of students and the effectiveness of the new legislation”.

Regarding the second part of your comment, we conducted in fact some other methods as well for triangulation purposes. Specifically, we also conducted three Discussion Groups or Group Interviews as a useful technique to obtain participants´ information in a semi-structured way, whose purpose is to provoke an intense debate among people representatives who are part of the Discussion Group. The incorporation of this technique aims to identify the main problems related to entrepreneurship, to be aware of the different groups’ point of view and interests and to perform a prospective approach on medium and long-term trends related to entrepreneurship. The results of this Discussion Groups were largely in line with the results shown in the empirical analyses.

In the section: Conclusions it should be good to add some thesis about the expected impact of the research for the national entities responsible for the youth entrepreneurship in Spain, especially some recommendations for the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness which granted this research as well as for some other entities responsible for the young entrepreneurs support such as: universities, incubators, commerce chambers, clusters and networks. 

Thank you for this insightful remark. We have added in the conclusions section some discussion about the expected impact of the research for national entities responsible for youth entrepreneurship in Spain as you recommended. Specifically, we added the following: “By unveiling the relevance of the internal locus of control, motivation, need for achievement, the search and identification of opportunities, autonomy and independence and self-efficacy, the results of the paper have important implications for multiple actors in charge of the sustainability of youth entrepreneurship in Spain. First, policy-makers such as the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and also the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport should take these results into consideration when designing and implementing programs to detect and support from an early stage entrepreneurial interest among students. In order to fully reap the expected benefits, such programs should also include a suitable training for teachers in which these capabilities are emphasized. In fact, the results highlight that training at school might not be enough, and instead suggest that learning should take place across boundaries and with interrelations with other agents in the society such as the family and professional associations. Further, universities should collaborate with commerce chambers, clusters, and professional networks in order to create sustainable opportunities for young people to overcome some of the challenges identified in this paper. For instance, these agents can promote the creation of incubators and institutions that facilitate access to funding (business angels, crowdsourcing…)”. We definitely agree that the paper is more useful for readers with this inclusion and we thank you for suggesting it.

Good luck

Once again we are extremely grateful for your insightful comments. We honestly believe that they have been very valuable to improve the quality of our paper. We hope we have been able to address all your concerns adequately.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for taking into account the suggestions by the reviewers. The paper appears more strongly. I would like to ask you one more thing: reconsider the title again. 

Current title: Entrepreneurial intentions among Spanish youth: entrepreneurial interest, socio-educational, psychological, and family factors

consider the following examples, or alternatives that make clear the relationship between EI and the other concepts in the title. Consider if the word 'factors' is ideal; if the 'entrepreneurial interest' variable is crucial in the title (it does not have the level of abstraction that the other variables have), etc.

Entrepreneurial intentions among Spanish youth explained by entrepreneurial interest, and socio-educational, psychological and family factors

Entrepreneurial intentions and interest among Spanish youth explained by socio-educational, psychological and family factors

The socio-educational, psychological and family-related antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions among Spanish youth

Author Response

February, 20, 2019

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your useful suggestion. We are glad that you find our paper more strongly now. For your convenience, we have reconsided the title again and of the three interesting suggestions that you makes us, we select “The socio-educational, psychological and family-related antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions among Spanish youth”. We hope that you will find our response satisfactory.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx