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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Adoption of business practices by participants in the small business managment training programme Bell, Gordon

Abstract

This study is an evaluation of the educational effectiveness of three courses in the Small Business Management Training Programme conducted in several districts of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. The evaluation utilizes the concept of adoption to determine the degree to which respondents have made use of the specified business skills and techniques taught within the courses. The study also attempts to measure the reaction of respondents to the courses in general, and to the instructors and course contents specifically. Data for the analysis were collected by interviewing a random sample of participants in each course from the population of participants in the Lower Mainland of B.C. There was a significant increase in the degree of adoption among respondents in all courses following participation in the programme. Gains in the degree of adoption were significant at the 1 per cent level of confidence. An analysis of adoption for each specific technique within each course indicates that the degree of adoption was not uniform among these techniques. An analysis of variance among means of adoption scores in relation to several characteristics of respondents indicated that three characteristics, namely education, the relationship of the respondent to the business, and the number of employees in the respondent's business, had a significant relationship to the degree to which respondents adopted the techniques. Differences among means were significant for the three characteristics at the 5 per cent level of confidence. The recorded scores on the three scales used to measure reactions to course, instructor, and course content respectively indicated a favourable reaction in each case and for each course.

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