Development of a computerized adaptive test to assess entrepreneurial personality

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Entrepreneurial behavior is of great importance nowadays owing to its significance in the generation of economic, social, personal, and cultural wellbeing. This behavior is influenced by cognitive and personality characteristics, as well as by socioeconomic and contextual factors. Entrepreneurial personality is made up of a set of psychological traits including self-efficacy, autonomy, innovation, internal locus of control, achievement motivation, optimism, stress tolerance, and risk-taking. The aim of this research is the development of a computerized adaptive test (CAT) to evaluate entrepreneurial personality. METHOD: A bank of 120 items was created evaluating various aspects of the entrepreneurial personality. The items were calibrated with the Samejima Graded Response Model using a sample of 1170 participants (M(age) = 42.34; SD(age) = 12.96). RESULTS: The bank of items had an essentially unidimensional fit to the model. The CAT exhibited high accuracy for evaluating a wide range of θ scores, using a mean of 16 items with a very low standard error (M = 0.157). Relative validity evidence for the CAT was obtained with two additional tests of entrepreneurial personality (the Battery for the Assessment of the Enterprising Personality and the Measure of Enterpreneurial Tendencies and Abilities), with correlations of .908 and .657, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The CAT developed has appropriate psychometric properties for the evaluation of entrepreneurial people.