Factors Affecting on Research Practices Development regarding Entrepreneurship in Agricultural Higher Education: A Two-Step Approach to Structural Equation Modeling

The purpose of this research was to identify the factors affecting research practices development (RPD) regarding entrepreneurship in agricultural higher education, case study Islamic Azad University, Khouzestan Province, Iran.  Faculty members in Islamic Azad University, Khouzestan Province were considered as statistical population. The sample size based on Cochran formula was determined (n=210). Stratified random sampling was used to select faculty members. A researcher-made questionnaire was employed for data collection. Its validity was confirmed by content validity and its total reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha as to be 0.81. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to describe RPD performance regarding entrepreneurship in agricultural higher education and inferential statistics to analyzing factors affecting on RDP. The results of the factor analysis showed that four factors such as encouraging researchers to research in entrepreneurship (MF1), institutionalization of entrepreneurship in academic research (MF2), establishing proper communication between the university and industry (SF) and creating the necessary rules and infrastructure for the commercialization of knowledge regarding entrepreneurship (LF) were identified as factors affecting the research practices development (RPD) regarding entrepreneurship in agricultural higher education which explained 62.55% of the total variance altogether. The result of the structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that, it can be seen that the predictive positive effect of MF1 to RDP is supported (β=0.38, t-value=4.86, <em>p</em><0.001). In addition, MF2 has a positive effect on RDP (β=0.39, t-value=5.08, <em>p</em><0.001). Also the LF has a positive effect on RDP (β=0.31, t-value=4.05, <em>p</em><0.001). MF2, SF and LF also have a significant impact on MF1. The findings showed that R² for RDP was 0.53. So that, these four construct (MF1, MF2, SF and LF) determinants accounts for 62% of the variance in the RDP.