Professional competencies development of sports science students: the need for more entrepreneurship education

As a high priority for moving the sports industry forward, the sports market ecosystem requires the development of professional competencies and improving the entrepreneurship education of sports science students. During the last years, entrepreneurship has gained importance in the sports sector to maintain competitiveness. Thus, universities need to promote sports sciences students’ entrepreneurial competencies to improve employability. This research aimed to analyze the differences between first-year and fourth-year sports science students regarding the merit of professional competencies within entrepreneurship education. Both groups of students completed a set of tests presenting professional success factors. Cognitive abilities were measured with Intelligence Structure Battery (INSSV - Short Form, S2) and personality traits with Big Five Structure Inventory (BFSI, short-form, S1). Data were processed with confirmatory factor analysis and multigroup moderation analysis. The model showed acceptable fit indices (NFI=0.89, CFI=0.97, and RMSEA=0.08). The multigroup moderation analysis results indicated that the strongest effect on work aspects of the personality of the first-year sports science students comes from Conscientiousness (β=0.97), Openness (β=0.79), and Agreeableness (β=0.72). In contrast, this impact on fourth-year sports science students exists from Extraversion (β=0.85), Emotional stability (β=0.80), and Openness (β=0.80). On another side, an analysis of cognitive abilities revealed that the strongest effect was produced by numerical ability (β=0.94; β=0.84, respectively). The results demonstrated that sub-samples do not differ regarding the latent dimensions of human resources assessment. These results lead to necessary changes in the sports curriculum of the study program related to entrepreneurship education.