There has never been a more apposite time to unravel the phenomenon of venture failure. There exists currently an extremely challenging environment for entrepreneurs due to ongoing global economic challenges, with many economies witnessing a sharp increase in business failure rates. South Africa has not escaped this dire predicament. For many South African entrepreneurs, failure remains a very real prospect. Consequently, academic work needs to reflect this rapid change in fortunes, warranting a much more prominent position for failure in contemporary discussions of entrepreneurship. Whilst failure is lauded as a fundamental learning experience, theorists have acknowledged that this view of failure is often espoused in popular management literature that bases its assertions on anecdotal evidence. There remains a paucity of academic studies that have articulated failure empirically and ground policy discussions in practical quantitative accounts. With so many businesses failing, it is vital to understand further how entrepreneurs recover and move on from this often painful and damaging experience and thereby highlight the positive and productive lessons that business failure can engender (Cope, 2015 Shepherd, 2009 Shepherd et al., 2009, 2008 Whyley, 1998). Evidence from the literature suggests that failure can produce future-oriented learning outcomes that increase the entrepreneur's level of entrepreneurial preparedness for further enterprising activity. Cope (2015) argues that generative learning outcomes are highly valuable and productive as entrepreneurs can develop a cognitive early warning system, enabling anticipatory corrective actions to be taken in subsequent ventures (Politis, 2008). At a fundamental level, venture failure studies can contribute towards streams of research that can explain, at least in part, why some more successfully recover from the negative emotional reaction to the loss of a failed business than others (Shepherd, 2009: 82). Entrepreneurs who actively process a failure event are in a unique position to start a successful new business (Shepherd et al., 2009: 142). Requirement and additional information: As a business researcher with a keen interest in business failure, you have been contracted by a venture capitalist seeking to unpack the dynamics of recovery from previous venture failure. The study seeks to examine the impact of venture failure experience and entrepreneurial learning from failure on subsequent venture performance in the South African context. You think that the findings from the study will be useful in building a model to explain this prominent entrepreneurship phenomenon. Data collection and analysis: In an empirical examination of 240 entrepreneurs operating in multiple industries in South Africa, you collected a longitudinal data set to explain whether, and to what extent, venture failure experience and entrepreneurial learning from failure influence new venture performance. All data was measured at the interval level. Table 5 below is an excerpt of the data collected for the study. Table 5: excerpt of the data collected from 240 entrepreneurs in a longitudinal study. Entrepreneur Ref # Venture failure experience Entrepreneurial failure learning New venture performance 001 5 4 7 002 6 4 6 003 7 5 6 004 6 6 7 005 5 5 6 006 6 6 7 007 7 7 8 008 4 8 7 009 3 6 6 240 5 8 8 You used IBM SPSS Statistics version 27 to analyse the data and the following output shown in Figure I to Figure IV was produced: Figure I: Descriptive Statistics Mean Std. Deviation N New_venture_performance 6.510 .41438 240 Entrepreneurial_failure_learning 6.755 .52894 240 Venture_failure_experience 7.145 .36959 240 Figure II: Regression model summary New venture performance Model Summary b Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .704a .495 .437 .41302 a. Predictors: (Constant), Venture_failure_experience Entrepreneurial_failure_learning b. Dependent Variable: New_venture_performance Figure III: Results of ANOVA for new venture performance model ANOVAa Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. 1 Regression 40.352 2 20.176 195.691 .000b Residual 24.435 237 0.103 Total 64.788 239 a. Dependent Variable: New_venture_performance b. Predictors: (Constant), Venture_failure_experience Entrepreneurial_failure_learning Figure IV: Regression coefficients for new venture performance model Coefficientsa Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients B Std. Error Beta t Sig. 1 (Constant) 3.187 .685 .056 .956 Venture_failure_experience 2.417 .434 .754 2.397 .024 Entrepreneurial_failure_learning 2.574 .567 .872 4.386 .000 a. Dependent Variable: New_venture_performance REQUIRED: 5.1 Formulate a title for the study. (2 marks) 5.2 Based on the background information, elaborate on the research paradigm and research design of your study. (4 marks) 5.3 Specify the independent variables (IV) and dependent variable (DV) underpinning the study. (3 marks) 5.4 Formulate the null and alternative hypotheses for the study. (2 marks) 5.5 Based on the output in Figure II to Figure III, provide a comprehensive interpretation of the output of the statistical analysis conducted in the study. Your interpretation should include the standard reporting format. (7 marks) 5.6 Based on the output in Figure IV and denoting the constructs Previous venture failure experience by X1 and Entrepreneurial learning from failure by X2 and New venture performance by Y, state an appropriate linear regression equation to describe your model.