Impact of Entrepreneurial Education Programs on Total Entrepreneurial Activity: The Case of Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic and article is a good starting point, I would encourage the Authors to include the following changes: 1) Please add the objective in the introduction: "The objective of the article is ...." 2) Writing a sentence "It is common in articles on entrepreneurship to start the discussion on its importance in the economic and social development of a country. We are not going to do any less." - and then followed by a very short passage on this is a bit ridicolous. The intorductory setence says that there should be a in-depth analysis of this problem, which didn't take place. 3) Line p. 126 "There are also recent reports which tackle EE, such as .." you didn;t mention the most important reports on EE for non-university education: e.g. "Youth work and entrepreneurial learning" European Commission 2017. This is the core of your topic. 4) Line 153, what LOE means? 5) In the literature there are 2 different terms "entrepreneurship educaton" (formal) and "entrepreneurial learning" (informal) - I miss it in your article, as you focus on on-university education this is why EL is more important than EE. 6) Your hypoteses H1 and H2 should be based on the theory and prior empirical studies - please retrvieve tchem / deve;loped tchem more deeply. 7) In pont 3.1. (lines 219-230) please add what was the sample size? To how many institutions did you contact? How many of tchem replied? What was a response rate? 8) Is the sample repreentative? Can we generalize/absolutize the results in the coclusion section? 9) Lines 289-299 I need to see the table with results, this is how it should be and it is in all articles. What are the veriables? Explain it clearly, please. 10) Line 357 and further, please add one passage on the following topics: (i) implications for the policy, (ii) research limitations, (iii) suggestions for further studies in this topic 11) Please use more updated literature for the last 5 years (2013-2018), e.g.: Wach, K. (2014). Europeanisation of Entrepreneurship Education in Europe – Looking Back and Looking Forward. Horyzonty Wychowania, 13(26), 11-31. Retrieved from https://horyzonty.ignatianum.edu.pl/index.php/HW/article/view/56 Nowak, H. (2016). The Role of the Polish Higher Education System in the Development of Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 4(1), 43-59. doi:https://doi.org/10.15678/EBER.2016.040104 Rachwał, T., Kurek, S., & Boguś, M. (2016). Entrepreneurship Education at Secondary Level in Transition Economies: A Case of Poland. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 4(1), 61-81. doi:https://doi.org/10.15678/EBER.2016.040105 Wach, K., & Wojciechowski, L. (2016). Entrepreneurial Intentions of Students in Poland in the View of Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 4(1), 83-94. doi:https://doi.org/10.15678/EBER.2016.040106 Sarkar, A., & Perényi, Á. (2017). Education Agents as Competitiveness Enhancers of Australian Universities by Internationalisation Facilitation. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 5(4), 61-89. doi:https://doi.org/10.15678/EBER.2017.050403 Wąsowska, A. (2016). Who Doesn't Want to be an Entrepreneur? The Role of Need for Closure in Forming Entrepreneurial Intentions of Polish Students. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 4(3), 27-39. doi:https://doi.org/10.15678/EBER.2016.040303 Rantanen, T., Pawlak, A., & Toikko, T. (2015). The Significance of Social Welfare Attitudes in Young People’s Entrepreneurial Intentions. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 3(1), 43-60. doi:https://doi.org/10.15678/EBER.2015.030104 Głodowska, A. (2017). Level of Education and Economic Growth in the Member States of the European Union: A Comparative Analysis. Horyzonty Wychowania, 16(37), 105-118. Retrieved from https://horyzonty.ignatianum.edu.pl/index.php/HW/article/view/1349 Łuczak-Trąpczyńska, M., & Trąpczyński, P. (2017). Fostering A Multi-level Approach to Entrepreneurial Pedagogy: The German Experience. Horyzonty Wychowania, 16(37), 129-146. Retrieved from https://horyzonty.ignatianum.edu.pl/index.php/HW/article/view/1352 GOOD LUCK WHILE REVISING YOUR ARTICLE!

Author Response

Answers to reviewer 1:

We are very grateful for your contribution and clarifications. We detail our answers to your suggested modifications.

1) We have added the study’s objective at the introduction:

               Line 63: the objective of the article is to analyze the impact of non-university entrepreneurial education programs in the total entrepreneurial activity rate in Spain.

2) We have expanded the introduction and added the following text. Lines 100.113:

We can resume the importance of today’s entrepreneurship with the following aspects: A) improves economy: enterprising is synonym of pursing financial growth. The majority of entrepreneurship is done to obtain higher economic stability. It follows logically that, if a country has a high entrepreneurship rate with dedicated, high quality entrepreneurs, will result in a country high on productive enterprises. This means it can potentially strengthen its economy stability, even more if it also exports its goods! B) Innovation: This leads to new products and, although not all new business needs to be innovative, entrepreneurs aim to become it more as each day passes. If there were no entrepreneurs, innovation would not be possible; who will take the initiative for it? C) Improve society’s development: Competence leads entrepreneurs to improve their products or services, meaning they also improve the quality of development within a society. D) Entrepreneurs also focus in solving problems, or at least making them easier to solve: only satisfied clients can bring profit! Because of this, entrepreneurship also brings solution to many problems which, otherwise, would be hard or nearly impossible to solve. This means entrepreneurs not only benefit themselves, but also the rest of society.

 

3) We have added your suggested citation

Line 146-147 “Taking the future into their own hands: Youth work and entrepreneurial learning”, among others,

4) We have specified what LOE means. Line 174: LOE (Organic Law of Education)  

5) Our work is fundamentally focused in Entrepreneurial Education, rather than entrepreneurial learning (informal) (EL).

6) The hypotheses are based in previous literature, which we develop in the text previous to their mention. These hypothesis were deduced by the literature we included. We have added more cites and references to further strengthen them (we include here as well the answer to your recommendation #11, we added actualized literature from the latest 5 years.)

7) We added the sample size: A total of 250 institutions were contacted, to which 96 responded (which means the response rate was 38.4%). They represented all Autonomous Communities.  We have also added a table (Table 1) for further details.

 

 

8) Representative sample, can results be generalized? Yes. The sample is representative, given we sampled data from all regions. Lines 256 to 262

9) Table with results: we added a table where we specify the variables on the study (independent, dependent), as well their relation (correlations), descriptive (mean, standard deviation). We also included a new table that resumes regression analyses.

10) We have included the following topics:  

Implications for the policy and practitioners: Lines 387-419

Limitations and future directions: Lines 421-456

11) Add more literature: we have added the suggested literature. It can be found at the introduction, literature review and conclusion.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

I enjoyed reading your paper. The topic is up-to-date and interesting. In my opinion there are issues in the manuscript the author(s) should consider for making it publishable. Possible suggestions for improvement are in the following line:

1. The study aims to contribute to a large body of existing literature on entrepreneurship topic. A new explanation is interesting only if it tells us things that other explanations cannot. What is the theoretical approach of this paper? References to Diaz-Garcia are not relevant. Please remove them.

2. You state: “Literature is scarce and presents certain contradictions. In the Spanish context, the works that address this issue are practically non-existent, although we do find some exceptions (Sánchez 2011)”. In the Journal of Entrepreneurship Education you will find more studies.

3. The methodology can also be better explained. Many important issues are missing, e.g. the information related to sample (it appears in the Table but should be specified in the text as well). Information about dependent, independent and control variables is missing. The authors not indicated whether they developed scales themselves or used tested scales from other sources.

4. It shows that the researcher has conducted this study by using questionnaire. How many questionnaires were distributed online?

5. The information related to the method of analysis is not clear. Please add tables for descriptive statistics. A recent paper by Barba-Sanchez & Atienza-Sahuquillo (2017) can be an example of the well-written methodology section.

6. In its present form, paper is more interesting for practitioners and policy-makers. The authors could explain the implications for practitioners in more details.

7. The avenues for further research should be also highlighted. Could not see any limitations of this study.

8. References are not correctly quoted, please correct.

All the best! 

Author Response

Answers to reviewer 2:

We are very grateful for your contribution and clarifications. We detail our answers to your suggested modifications.

 

1.- We have discarded the reference Díaz-García (Lines 74,193, 197)

2.- We consulted the Journal of Entrepreneurship Education and cited research within his journal related to our subject.

3.- We’ve added information regarding the sample. We added tables which specify sample, independent and dependent variables, and that the scales were built ad hoc. We included the sample size: A total of 250 institutions were contacted, to which 96 responded (which means the response rate was 38.4%). They represented all Autonomous Communities.  We also added a table (Table 1) for further details

4.- We specified the number of questionnaires we administered and how many were answered back.

5.- We added descriptive statistics. Table 3

6.- We specified implications:

Implications for the policy and practitioners: Lines 387-419

7.- We specified limitations:

Limitations and future directions: Lines 421-456

8. We corrected the references

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you, I hope you can see now the article is much better.

I still have two serious doubts:

1) In my opinion Table 1 is unnecessary, but of course you can have it. I still misss the Table with variables as I asked in my first round review (column 1: name of variable, column 2: how it was measured, column 3: scale, column 4: source of such a variable, etc.). 

2) Having entitites from all regions does NOT mean the representatoiveness of the sample. I still don;t agree you can generalize/absolutize based on your sample, which is in my opion not representatiove as it probably doesn't meet the necessary conditions.

Good luck!

Author Response

Thanks for the feedback. Next I answer the suggested questions.

1) The table has been included  (table 2) with the study variables, and these variables have been explained, and how they were measured.

2) 

Regarding on whether our sample is representative: 

We were informed by the main entities responsible for entrepreneurial education in each region of all their programs available. Our sample is representative in the sense that we took into acount the number available in each region, and our sample includes most of them.

 

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for implementing changes. Good luck!