臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.30 NO.1

49 NTU Management Review Vol. 30 No. 1 Apr. 2020 fewer than 5 years ago (1), and as late-stage ventures if they have been registered for more than 5 years (2). This cutoff point ensures a balanced distribution of early- and late-stage ventures in the sample. Control variables This study includes controls for the variables that may affect the examined relationships: age, education, work experience, and capital. Work experience is measured by asking the participants to indicate how many years they have worked in a full-time job. Variables for age and education are controlled because these variables can be linked to prior knowledge and social networks (Ozgen and Baron, 2007, Sullivan and Marvel, 2011). Studies indicate that the level of education and work experience can exert a strong effect on opportunity recognition (Marvel and Lumpkin, 2007). The amount of available capital may also affect the model. 3.2.3 Reliability and Validity Assessment Feedback from the pretest interviews is used to increase the construct validity of the questionnaire measures. The entrepreneurs discuss their interpretations of each questionnaire item to identify any ambiguous phrasing. Their comments are incorporated into the structured questionnaire revision, thus increasing the scale validity. Furthermore, the interrater reliability to test the agreement of the items. The responses of three assistant professors of management with PhDs were consistent with the factor analysis (an agreement rate of at least 80% existed among multiple raters; Hinkin, 1998). No major problems have been detected with the structured questionnaire. 3.2.4 Common Method Variance Self-report questionnaires are used to collect participant responses and Harman’s one-factor test to test the common method variance (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986). Common method variance is not identified: three factors account for 72.56% of the variance, with the first factor accounting for 26.9% of the variance (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Lee, and Podsakoff, 2003). The use of objective data (the registration year) to measure the venture stage might reduce the risk of common method variance. 4. Results Table 1 shows a summary of the descriptive statistics and correlations for all of the variables used in the analysis. The results confirm the original expectations. Age is significantly correlated with work experience, capital, and the venture stage. Network broadening and deepening are correlated with the innovativeness of opportunities.