An exploratory survey of prospective childcare givers' entrepreneurial potential in Taiwan.

Abstract

Prospective child care givers need to prepare themselves not only for employment but also for entrepreneurship in the field of child care service. In order to explore the entrepreneurial potential of prospective child care givers, an exploratory survey was conducted to survey 68 senior students of a department of child care in a public university/college of technology. As a result, it is found: (1) Prospective child care givers have moderate entrepreneurial potential; (2) There is no significant difference in entrepreneurial potential between 2-year-program and 4-year-program students; (3) "Collaborative," "be comfortable with partnerships," and "family and friends are supportive," under the categories Motivation, Capacity, and Support, respectively, are the top three entrepreneurial skills; and (4) "Innovative" under Motivation, "have two or more partnerships" under Capacity and "community is actively helpful" under Support are the bottom three skills. Based upon the above findings, the following three interlocking conclusions and implications are made: (1) Prospective child care givers need to increase their entrepreneurial potential; (2) Multi-skills have to be addressed to increase prospective child care givers' entrepreneurial potential; and (3) More subjects and aspects should be surveyed to increase the generaliability and validity. A complete list of questionnaire questions is appended. (Contains 2 tables.)