Attitude of the Youth towards Entrepreneurship: A Case of Nakuru County.
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Date
2019
Authors
Ndungu, Jane Wanjiru
Anyieni, Abel
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Academic Journals
Abstract
Attitude means a feeling or an opinion about
something or someone or a way of behaving
that is caused by this feeling or opinion.
Knowledge of entrepreneurship is likely to
shape the attitude of the young people and
motivate them to start their own business or
come up with new innovations in the future
without just expecting to end up in the white
collar jobs or being employed. Over the
years the young people have been found to
favour being employed rather than coming
up with their own businesses or being selfemployed. This brings the question of what
could be the cause for the attitude of the
young people towards entrepreneurship.
This study was an assessment of the attitude
of the youth towards entrepreneurship in
public tertiary institutions offering technical
Courses in Nakuru County. The study was
looking into factors that affect the attitude of
the young people towards entrepreneurship.
The personal traits and external factors were
the independent variables while the attitude
towards entrepreneurship was the dependent
variable. The external factors like culture,
education, infrastructure, and environment
were some of the factors that were looked
into as influencing attitude towards
entrepreneurship. The social learning theory,
the Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory and
the Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour
and were adopted for the study. The study
was carried out in two public tertiary
institutions that offer technical courses in
Nakuru County and this was a representative
of other institutions in Kenya at the same
level. The Institutions were Kenya Industrial
Training Institute and Rift Valley Training
Institute of Science and Technology both
located at the outskirts of Nakuru town. The
research design used was case study method.
The population consisted of one thousand
five hundred students. Purposeful method
and simple random sampling methods were
used to select the institutions and a sample
of 450 students. Data was collected using
questionnaires. The validity of the
instruments was ensured through
constructive criticism from the supervisor.
The results and discussions were presented
using tables, charts and graphs. Parents and
guardians of the respondents were found to
have a great influence on the choices of
courses that the respondents took in the
institutions. It also came out that most
families of the respondents run businesses at
home but majority of the respondents were
not involved in the running of the
businesses. Lack of finances, long
procedures of acquiring businesses licenses
and high rates of interests charged on loans
to start came out as the main challenges that
would influence the attitude of the
respondents towards entrepreneurship.
Communication network and electricity did
not seem to have a significant impact on the
attitude of the students towards
entrepreneurship. The study recommended
the need to start training in technical and
entrepreneurship subjects from as early as
primary schools to help in cultivating young
people’s entrepreneurial attitude at an early
stage. The study also recommended that
curriculum developers need to include
subjects with the entrepreneurial component
in the primary and secondary curriculums so
that the students can start developing the
entrepreneurial culture at an early age. A similar study including more stakeholders
like the parents/guardians to find out their
role in influencing the attitude of the young
people towards entrepreneurship should be
carried out.
Description
An Article Published in International Academic Journal of Innovation, Leadership and Entrepreneurship
Keywords
Attitude, Entrepreneurship, Youth
Citation
Ndungu, J. W. & Anyieni, A. (2019). Attitude of the youth towards entrepreneurship: A case of Nakuru County. International Academic Journal of Innovation, Leadership and Entrepreneurship, 2(2), 211-226