Factors Affecting Entrepreneurship Skills of Agricultural Students of Agriculture Training Centers

Today, growth of entrepreneurship training programs in universities and higher education centers are based on the pre assumption that entrepreneurship skills are acquired. The purpose of this study was to extract factors affecting entrepreneurship skills of students in agriculture training centers in three provinces of Fars, Khorasan Razavi, and Alborz. The research method was applied in terms of purpose and exploratory in terms of mixed data type. The data collection tool was a researcher- made questionnaire, content validity of which was approved by agricultural extension and education experts and its reliability was estimated to be 0.91 using ordinal theta coefficient. The independent variables consisted of educational, psychological, economic, and socio and cultural variables and the dependent variable was entrepreneurship skills. The statistical population of the research is last semester students in agriculture training centers in Fars, Khorasan Razavi, and Alborz provinces in 2018(670). The sample size was determined using Morgan table, 245 people and were selected by stratified random sampling with proportional assignment. The findings of spearman correlation test showed that factors: educational, psychological, economic, and socio and cultural had a significant positive correlation with entrepreneurship skills. Applying interactive models of structural Equation Modeling (SEM) indicated that the most important factor affecting entrepreneurship skills among respondents is psychological factor with the path coefficient of 0/63. Educational and economic factors affected entrepreneurship skills with path coefficients of 0/24 and 0/23.