محمد صالحی

This study was performed to identify factors affecting the entrepreneurial university. In order to achieve this goal, a sample of 173 faculty members (academic rank of associate professor or higher) in academic year of 2015-2016 was selected using the using relative stratified sampling and Cochran’s formula. In this study, given the purpose and nature of research, for analysis of the data, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used. The results of in-depth interviews and semi-structured and targeted interview with 14 qualified university professors led to the initial questionnaire developed by the researchers at 5-point Likert scale with 50 items; upon exploratory analysis, 9 items were excluded due to extraction value of commonality smaller than 0.5. Content validity of the questionnaire was approved by accredited academic experts. To assess the construct validity, convergent and divergent validity criteria were used. The results of factor loadings of each item showed that all items had factor loading of over 0.4 and average extracted variance of over 0.5, thus convergent validity of the variables was confirmed. In addition, the values ​​of the square root of the average variance extracted (AVE) was highest, indicating the validity of divergent validity of the variables. Composite reliability and validity of the questionnaire for all variables showed high levels of 0.7. Results showed that the size and components affecting establishment of entrepreneurial university included internal factors (capabilities, management and leadership, structure, prospects, financial resources and research, cultural and education policies) and external factors (interaction with environment and internationalization of the university). Finally, test of the model using t-test showed that the size and the identified factors had a positive and significant impact on the entrepreneurial university.

Validation is an important enterprise especially when a test is a high stakes one. Demographic variables like gender and field of study can affect test results and interpretations. Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is a way to make sure that a test does not favor one group of test takers over the others. This study investigated DIF in terms of gender in the reading comprehension subtest (35 items) of a high stakes test using a three-step logistic regression procedure (Zumbo, 1999). The participants of the study were 3,398 test takers, both males and females, who took the test in question (the UTEPT) as a partial requirement for entering a PhD program at the University of Tehran. To show whether the 35 items of the reading comprehension part exhibited DIF or not, logistic regression using a three step procedure (Zumbo, 1999) was employed. Three sets of criteria of Cohen’s (1988), Zumbo’s (1999), and Jodin and Girel’s (2001) were selected. It was revealed that, though the 35 items show “small” effect sizes according to Cohen’s classification, they do not display DIF based on the other two criteria. Therefore, it can be concluded that the reading comprehension subtest of the UTEPT favors neither males nor females.