Investigating the leisure time attitudes and hopelessness levels of the personnel in the Duzce police deparment

The purpose of this study is to investigate the personnel leisure time attitudes and hopelessness level in the Düzce Police Deparment. What kind of activities personnel in the Duzce Police Department engage in their leisure time, how much time they allocate to these activities and how these activities affect their working performance and hopelessness level are among the purposes of this study.The population of this study was composed of 350 police officers, whom were selected from 850 police working in the Duzce Police Department. In order to apply the survey to the sample group,the researcher met the personnel face to face, and informed them at first hand. SPSS Statistic Software was used to analyze the data and the significance level of the study has been calculated as (p<0.05) . In this research, "Leisure Attitude Scale:LAS",which was developed by Ragheb ve Beard (1982) and adapted into Turkish by Akgül ve Gürbüz, and 'Hopelessness Scale' developed by Dr. Aaron T.Beck (1974) and adapted to Turkish by Savaşır and Şahin were used by the researcher. In the result of the research, it was revealed that participants' hopelessness perceptions are low, the male personnel hopelessness level are higher than the female ones, personnel working at the city center have high level of hopelessness and older personnel have higher level of hopelessness, ill personnel are more hopeless than the healthy ones, personnel leisure time attitudes are high, and there is a negative relation between the participants' leisure time attitudes and their hopelessness perceptions. Key words: Time, free time, leisure time, recreation, hopelessness and Police