Testing the EntreComp framework and its relation to start-up behaviour in seven European countries

PurposeThe European Commission has published a general framework of entrepreneurship competence (EC), EntreComp, to create a shared definition and support its development. This study proposes and tests a scale to measure EC based on the EntreComp framework and examines its relation to start-up behaviour using data from seven European countries.Design/methodology/approachThe data were gathered from seven European countries and consist of 1,128 answers from both secondary and higher education level students. The authors use explorative factor analysis (EFA), analysis of variance and logistic regression analysis as data analysis methods.FindingsThe results show that EC is related to start-up behaviour and sensitive to role models and prior experience of entrepreneurship but is not sensitive to gender or level of education. The results also show that although the framework proposes three distinct areas, EC is unidimensional.Originality/valueThe study tests the EntreComp framework and introduces a scale for measuring EC based on the framework. The results show that EC can be addressed as unidimensional construct and that it explains start-up behaviour and develops through enterprising activities. The study also shows the impact of role models on EC. No difference in EC between genders is observed, suggesting the gender differences in entrepreneurship arise from factors other than competence.

Conceptualizing the Factor Structure of Parents’ Math Anxiety and Associations with Children’s Mathematics Skills

There is a growing literature examining the association between parents’ math anxiety and children’s mathematics skills. Previous research has considered parents’ math anxiety as a unidimensional construct that primarily focused on parents’ experiences doing mathematics themselves. However, this research did not account for parents’ experiences when doing mathematics with their children. Thus, there were two goals of the present study: 1) to identify the structure of parents’ math anxiety when considering context-dependent situations, and 2) to determine whether parent math anxiety was related to children’s early numeracy skills. We conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses using a sample of 155 preschool children (M age = 4.20 years, SD = 0.71; 51% female). The best-fitting model of parents’ math anxiety was a bifactor model, suggesting parents’ math anxiety was best conceptualized as a multidimensional construct. However, structural equation models showed parent math anxiety was not a significant predictor of children’s numeracy performance. These findings provide a foundation for understanding parents’ math anxiety as multidimensional and raise questions about potential mechanisms that may explain prior work finding mixed relations between math anxiety and children’s numeracy performance.

Influencers' intimate self-disclosure and its impact on consumers' self-brand connections: scale development, validation, and application

PurposeThis study develops and validates a scale to measure social media influencers' intimate self-disclosure (SMIs' ISD), by accessing consumer perceptions of the intimacy levels of SMIs' self-disclosure. The authors further evaluate the extent to which SMIs' ISD fosters consumers' self-brand connections via consumer-SMI parasocial relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe scale was developed through item generation, purification, and validation. First, items were generated from existing scales and revised based on feedback provided by experts. The items were subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using an online survey with 433 participants. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the predictive power of SMIs' ISD on parasocial relationships and self-brand connections.FindingsThe results suggest that the perceived SMIs' ISD is a unidimensional construct. As proposed, SMIs' ISD enhances consumer-brand connections through the underlying mechanism of consumers' sense of being in a parasocial relationship with an SMI.Originality/valueThis study advances self-disclosure and influencer marketing literature by addressing the lack of measures on SMIs' ISD from a consumer perspective and the scarcity of empirical understanding of how brands can profit from SMIs' capabilities to make intimate self-disclosure. Based on the literature review, this study is the first to empirically consider factual, emotional, and cognitive intimacy to develop scale and demonstrate the importance of SMIs' ISD in developing consumers' self-brand connections.

Psychometric properties of the Comic Style Markers – Portuguese version: applying bifactor and hierarchical approaches to studying broad versus narrow styles of humor

Given the relevance of humor for psychosocial assessment and promoting positive functioning, it is important to understand the relationship between humor and personality. A recent framework for describing individual differences in humor posits eight comic styles that can be measured using the Comic Style Markers (CSM). In total, 665 Portuguese adults (M age = 32.1 years) completed the CSM and Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory. CFAs supported modeling the CSM as a bifactor model. Bifactor indices suggested a general humor factor could be interpreted as a unidimensional construct, but that CSM items are multidimensional. A hierarchical analysis showed the styles could be represented at several levels of abstraction. A SEM analysis suggested certain styles had distinct associations with personality dimensions. These findings suggest that the use of certain styles (namely wit, sarcasm, and cynicism) was related to individual differences in temperament and character beyond a person’s overall humor potential.

The Construction and Validation of a New Listening Span Task

The listening span task is a measure of working memory that requires participants to process sets of increasing numbers of utterances and store the last word of each utterance for recall at the end of each set. Measures to date have contained an exceedingly demanding processing component, possibly leading to insufficient resources to meet the word recall requirement, which may have affected the sensitivity of the measure to distinguish different levels of working memory. Further, tasks thus far have asked participants to verify the content utterances based on knowledge, which may have confounded the measurement of working memory capacity with world knowledge. An additional weakness is that they lack sound psychometric construct validity evidence, which clouds what these tools actually measure. This pilot study presents a listening span task that accounts for preceding methodological shortcomings, which was administered to 31 Japanese junior high school students. The participants listened to ten sets (two sets of equal length of two, three, four, five and six utterances) of short casual utterances, judged whether they made sense in Japanese, and recalled the last word of each utterance in the set. Performance was assessed through a scoring procedure new to listening span tasks in which credit is given for the words recalled in order of appearance until memory failure. The data was analyzed through the Rasch model, which produces evidence for different aspects of validity and indicates if the items in a test measure a unidimensional construct. The results provided validity evidence for the use of the new listening span task and revealed that the instrument measured a single unidimensional construct.

The Construction and Validation of a New Listening Span Task

The listening span task is a measure of working memory that requires participants to process sets of increasing numbers of utterances and store the last word of each utterance for recall at the end of each set. Measures to date have contained an exceedingly demanding processing component, possibly leading to insufficient resources to meet the word recall requirement, which may have affected the sensitivity of the measure to distinguish different levels of working memory. Further, tasks thus far have asked participants to verify the content utterances based on knowledge, which may have confounded the measurement of working memory capacity with world knowledge. An additional weakness is that they lack sound psychometric construct validity evidence, which clouds what these tools actually measure. This pilot study presents a listening span task that accounts for preceding methodological shortcomings, which was administered to 31 Japanese junior high school students. The participants listened to ten sets (two sets of equal length of two, three, four, five and six utterances) of short casual utterances, judged whether they made sense in Japanese, and recalled the last word of each utterance in the set. Performance was assessed through a scoring procedure new to listening span tasks in which credit is given for the words recalled in order of appearance until memory failure. The data was analyzed through the Rasch model, which produces evidence for different aspects of validity and indicates if the items in a test measure a unidimensional construct. The results provided validity evidence for the use of the new listening span task and revealed that the instrument measured a single unidimensional construct.

Isolation, self-blame and perceived invalidation in aid personnel: identifying humanitarian-specific distress using the PostAID/Q

Objective Humanitarian-specific psychological distress following deployment can elude detection using contemporary measures of trauma-related stress. This study assesses the unidimensional structure and convergent validity of the Post-deployment Altruistic Identity Disruption Questionnaire (PostAID/Q), an 18-item questionnaire underpinned by the construct Altruistic Identity/Disruption (AI/AID). Method Humanitarian aid personnel (N=108) completed an online web survey, inclusive of the Moral Injury Questionnaire (MIQ), Posttraumatic Distress Disorder Checklist (PCL-5), Psychological Well-Being Posttraumatic Changes Questionnaire (PWB-PTCQ) and Social Provisions Scale (SPS). Results A confirmatory factor analysis suggested a single factor structure providing further support for the conception of AI/AID as a unidimensional construct. Convergent validity was demonstrated through (1) utility for predicting a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis assessed by the PCL-5, and (2) moral injury assessed by the MIQ. The PostAID/Q was further moderately and negatively associated with the availability of social support (assessed by the SPS) and lower self-reports of psychological well-being post trauma (assessed by the PWB-PCTQ). Finally, the PostAID/Q demonstrated evidence of incremental validity in predicting humanitarian specific psychological distress over and above the PCL-5. Specifically, the PostAID/Q predicted increased moral injury on the MIQ, and decreased psychological well-being post trauma. Conclusions The PostAID/Q can assist in identifying humanitarian specific psychological responses post deployment guiding support for personnel, over and above more traditional measures of posttraumatic stress.

Why Do People Agree With Both Regular and Reversed Items? A Logical Response Perspective

The current research challenges the received view that misresponses to reversed items are the result of participants’ irrational behavior. On the contrary, for participants at a midpoint level of a trait, it is perfectly logical to agree and disagree with seemingly equivalent statements (e.g., I’m not tall, but neither am I short). For this reason, regular and reversed items for a unidimensional construct were predicted to load on separate factors. Two types of reversed items—polar opposites and negated regular items—were also predicted to load on separate factors, as they are qualitatively different. An empirical study supported this explanation. Differential responding was found to be highest for participants at the mid-level of a trait and diminished toward the ends, revealing a quadratic relationship and a trait × method interaction. Thus, our findings demonstrate that the logical response pattern of individuals at the mid-level of a trait is another previously unrecognized explanation for why the inclusion of regular and reverse-keyed items can contribute to the apparent bi-dimensionality of unidimensional constructs (for data analysis results, see https://osf.io/krh2w/ ).

Should Fast-Food Franchisees Pursue Entrepreneurial Orientation?

Although it is widely accepted that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) improves firm performance, scholars have advised that particular attention should be paid to the context. In this research, we investigate a less explored context of franchising where business systems and procedures are usually dictated to franchisees by franchisors. Therefore, whether a franchisor should allow franchisees to pursue EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy) is not clear. In the context of franchising, the majority of prior studies have mainly focused on the employment of EO as a unidimensional construct and at the franchisor level. In this research, we take a bottom-up perspective and evaluate the impact of different dimensions of EO on franchisees’ performance. Our analysis of a multi-group of 183 restaurant franchisees located in Sweden and Iran reveals that only the pursuit of proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness improves a franchisee’s performance and other dimensions do not play a significant role in improving performance in this context.

Brazilian Adaptation of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale: A Psychometric Investigation of a Measure of Coronaphobia

This study examined the psychometric properties of a Brazilian adapted version of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS-BR) in a sample of adults in Brazil. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the CAS-BR produces a reliable (α = .84), unidimensional construct whose structure was shown to be invariant across gender, race, and age. However, some items of the CAS-BR were stronger indicators of the coronavirus anxiety construct for women and younger adults. Although the CAS-BR demonstrated evidence of discrimination ability for functional impairment (AUC = .77), Youden indexes were low to identify a clinical cut-score. Construct validity was demonstrated with correlations between CAS-BR scores and measures of functional impairment, generalized anxiety, and depression. Exploratory analyses revealed that CAS-BR total scores were higher among women and participants with a history of anxiety disorder. These findings are consistent with previous investigations and support the validity of CAS-BR for measuring coronavirus anxiety with Brazilian adults.