Validating the Measurement of Entrepreneurial Orientation

The purpose of this paper is to report on the study carried out in order to develop a valid measure for entrepreneurial orientation, particularly in the context of low-income households in Malaysia. Most previous studies examined the constructs of risktaking and innovativeness as the components of entrepreneurial orientation; however, a scarce number of researchers focused on other significant attributes of entrepreneurial orientation, such as proactiveness or autonomy. Therefore, this study has examined Creativity and Innovativeness, Risk Taking, Proactiveness, and Autonomy, also presenting an instrument to measure Entrepreneurial Orientation. The study adopted a cross-sectional design, while quantitative data was collected from 800 households across four districts in Kelantan, Malaysia, using structured interviews. Based on the reliability and validity testing, the study finalized the instrument to 17 items yielding four factors, i.e., Creativity & Innovativeness (four items), Risk Taking (three items), Proactiveness (five items), and Autonomy (five items). The findings of the reflective hierarchical model reveal that Autonomy is the highest contributor to entrepreneurial orientation among the lowincome households in Kelantan, followed by Proactiveness, Creativity, & Innovativeness, and Risk-Taking. Future researchers could further extend the developed measure by cross-examining the instrument presented in this study across different income-level groups throughout developing and developed nations.