A survey on the current state of innovation and entrepreneurship knowledge and experience among university students in Jilin Province

. A questionnaire was used to investigate the knowledge and experience of university students in Jilin Province regarding innovation and entrepreneurship. A non-parametric test was used to analyze whether there were significant differences in knowledge perception, and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship between paired samples and independent samples. The results showed significant disparities in students’ knowledge perception, and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship. No significant differences in knowledge perception, or experience of innovation and entrepreneurship were found between the male and female samples. Significant differences in both aspects were found between samples at different stages. All this suggests that as students grow in age and work experience, their knowledge perception, and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship are continuously enriched. To ease the pressure on employment, university students should be actively encouraged to innovate and start businesses.


Introduction
College students are the future of the motherland and a reserve force for the country's economic and social development.How to further enrich the knowledge of university students about innovation and entrepreneurship, increase their experience in innovation and entrepreneurship, and adequately mobilize their enthusiasm for innovation and entrepreneurship based on professional knowledge is also an essential goal of university personnel training.To this end, numerous scholars have conducted related studies, which are mainly reflected in the following two aspects.
Some experts and scholars have conducted related studies on the status quo of innovation and entrepreneurship education for college students, the difficulties they face, and the education system for innovation and entrepreneurship.To improve the innovation and entrepreneurship education system in colleges and universities, Xu, T., Qi, L., and Tian, F. (2023) proposed countermeasures.These included strengthening the innovation and entrepreneurship teachers in universities as well as enhancing the operation of innovation and entrepreneurship incubation bases [1].Zhang, X., and Yang, X. (2022) believe that application-oriented talents with professional vision can be cultivated by furthering the reform of innovation and entrepreneurship education in universities, enhancing the quality assurance system, focusing on the process control of practical links, and encouraging graduates to innovate and start business [2].Jin, Q. (2022) proposed measures and recommendations for college students' innovation and entrepreneurship education in the digital economy, including the impact of the innovation and entrepreneurship environment, innovation and entrepreneurship curriculum development, innovation and entrepreneurship practice results transformation, and the establishment of an innovation and entrepreneurship evaluation system [3].Sun, A. (2022) elaborated on the main ways to boost college students' innovation and entrepreneurship education and proposed a "five-in-one" training mechanism of building a sound mechanism, improving the system, building a platform, building a team, and integrating resources [4].Huang, W. and Li, W. (2021) pointed out that the innovation and entrepreneurship education system of college students is facing different challenges in the post-epidemic era, such as current formats of the digital economy, a conservative view of career choice, online teaching modes, etc. [5].
Based on the questionnaire survey data of undergraduate students at Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Wu, M. (2021) specifically analyzed the development status of college students' innovation and entrepreneurship education under the background of "Internet +" [6].Rivera, Y. et al. (2021) describe the level of student's knowledge and experience in entrepreneurship and innovation along with their participation in the related activities in University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez [7].Portuguez Castro, M., and Gómez Zermeño, M. (2021) seek to identify the entrepreneurial profile of university students through their experiences, interests, attitudes, and entrepreneurial skills at a university in Mexico [8].
Several scholars have studied the implementation and management of innovative and entrepreneurial training programs for university students.Zhao. Z. et al. (2022) believe that the innovation and entrepreneurship training program for college students should be results-oriented, and the conclusion and outstanding standards of the project should be defined for university level, provincial level, and national college students [9].Lin, F. (2022) pointed out the main problems existing in the innovation and entrepreneurship processes of university students and proposed measures to improve the implementation mechanism and process of the project [10].Dong, W. (2022) analyzed the current situation of the innovation and entrepreneurship training program for university students in Shanxi Province in 2020 and proposed that universities should attach importance to the process, management departments should implement dynamic management, and the government should establish a resource integration and sharing mechanism [11].
In summary, some scholars have studied the current state of innovation and entrepreneurship education for university students, the difficulties they face, and the construction of the innovation and entrepreneurship education system.Others have come up with ideas on how to give full play to innovation and entrepreneurship training programs for university students in terms of improving their practical ability to innovate and start businesses.There are relatively few surveys and studies on the current state of knowledge perception, and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship among university students.Therefore, this paper sets out to investigate the current state of knowledge and experience in innovation and entrepreneurship among university students in Jilin Province.

Questionnaire survey
Respondents to the questionnaire were university students in Jilin Province, including current students and graduates.To enhance the validity of the survey results, the survey adopted the "Wenjuanxing" survey platform, mainly through the purchase of sample service, to accurately collect questionnaires from the survey objects.A total of 315 questionnaires were collected, of which 295 were valid and 20 were invalid.

Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Kruskal-Wallis test
A Wilcoxon signed-rank test is a nonparametric test.This test aims to infer whether there is a difference between the two population medians from the two correlated samples of the paired sample.It is also commonly used in nonparametric T-tests of paired samples.
A Kruskal-Wallis test is also a nonparametric test for comparing groups of two or more continuous or discrete variables.It does not assume a specific distribution of the data, similar to a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Normality test
To investigate the differences between student knowledge and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship, this paper first conducted descriptive statistics and normality tests on two sets of survey data, the results of which are presented in Table 1.The valid sample size of this survey is 295, so the results of the Kolmogonov-Smirnoff (K-S) test are selected.The results show a significance of 0.000 for the normal test and less than 0.05 for both sets of data.Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected, and the data for both student knowledge perception and experience in innovation and entrepreneurship are assumed not to follow a normal distribution.

Wilcoxon signed-rank test
In this paper, we also investigate whether there is a significant difference between the two sets of data by using a non-parametric test, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.The results of the tests are shown in Table 2.As can be seen from Table 2, the P-value of the Wilcoxon signed-rank test is 0.000, which is less than 0.01.Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected, and it is argued that there is a significant difference between the perception of knowledge and the experience of innovation and entrepreneurship among students.
As can be seen from the descriptive statistical results in Table 2, the average score of students' perception of innovation and entrepreneurship knowledge is 6.89, which is significantly higher than the average score of their experience of innovation and entrepreneurship of 6.25, indicating that students have mastered the relevant knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship in various ways, but their practical experience is relatively weak.

Analysis of knowledge perception and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship among different groups of students
In this paper, the Kruskal-Wallis test is used to investigate whether there are significant differences in student knowledge perceptions, and experiences of innovation and entrepreneurship across different groups.

Gender
The survey data obtained from "Perception of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge" and "Experience in innovation and entrepreneurship" in the questionnaire are classified according to gender, see Table 3 for details.As can be seen from Table 3, the score of the female sample population in understanding and perception of innovation and entrepreneurship knowledge is slightly higher than that of the male sample population, and the score of the male sample population in experience of innovation and entrepreneurship is slightly higher than that of the female sample population.In addition, both men and women have a higher perception of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge than experience.To investigate whether there are significant differences between men and women in their perceptions of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge and experience, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used for additional research in this paper, and the results are presented in Table 4.As can be seen from the data in Table 4, the significance of the Kruskal-Wallis test is 0.736 and 0.829, both greater than 0.05, for the male and female sample populations in terms of their perception of knowledge about innovation and entrepreneurship and their experience with innovation and entrepreneurship.Thus, the null hypothesis is accepted.This suggests that there is no significant difference between the male and female sample populations in their perception of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge or their experience with innovation and entrepreneurship.

Current stage: in school or graduated
The data obtained from the survey were classified and statistically analyzed according to the different current stages, and the results are presented in Table 5.As can be seen from Table 5, graduates have higher knowledge perception, and experience than current students.At the same time, the average score of knowledge perception on innovation and entrepreneurship is also higher than the average score of experience.To investigate whether there are significant differences in knowledge perception, and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship among the sample population at different stages, the Kruskal-Wallis test was performed separately on both sets of survey data, and the results are presented in Table 6.As can be seen from Table 6, the significance of the Kruskal-Wallis test on the perception of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge and the experience of students at different stages is 0.000, which is less than 0.05.Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected, suggesting a significant difference in perceptions of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge and experience between current students and graduates.Current students have significantly less knowledge and experience in innovation and entrepreneurship than graduates.As a result, people's knowledge and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship are continuously enriched as they grow in age and experience.

Conclusions
A difference analysis of student knowledge perception, and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship shows that, overall, students have significantly different perceptions of innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge and richness of innovation and entrepreneurial experience.Analysis of the different groups showed that the male and female sample populations did not show significant differences in either respect.Significant differences in these two aspects were found between the sample groups at different stages.All this suggests that the knowledge perception and experience of innovation and entrepreneurship are being continuously enriched by students as they grow in age and work experience.To ease the pressure on employment, university students should be actively encouraged to innovate and start businesses.

Table 1 .
Descriptive statistics and normality test.

Table 5 .
Descriptive statistics (according to the current stage).

Table 6 .
Kruskal-Wallis test (according to the current stage).