Predicting Entrepreneurial Intention of Students: An Extreme Learning Machine with Gaussian Barebone Harris Hawks Optimizer

This study aims to propose an effective intelligent model for predicting entrepreneurial intention, which can provide a reasonable reference for the formulation of talent training programs and the guidance of entrepreneurial intention of students. The prediction model is mainly based on the kernel extreme learning machine (KELM) optimized by the improved Harris hawk’s optimizer (HHO). In order to obtain better parameters and feature subsets, the Gaussian barebone (GB) strategy is introduced to improve the HHO algorithm, so as to strengthen the optimization ability for tuning parameters of KELM and identifying the compact feature subsets. Then, an optimal KELM model (GBHHO-KELM) is established according to the obtained optimal parameters and feature subsets to predict the entrepreneurial intention of students. In the experiment, GBHHO is compared with the other nine well-known methods in 30 CEC 2014 benchmark problems. The experimental findings suggest that the proposed GBHHO method is significantly superior to the existing methods in most problems. At the same time, GBHHO-KELM is compared with other machine learning methods in the prediction of entrepreneurial intention. The experimental results indicate that the proposed GBHHO-KELM can achieve better classification performance and higher stability in accordance with the four metrics. Therefore, we can conclude that the GBHHO-KELM model is expected to be an effective tool for the prediction of entrepreneurial intention.