Elements of job satisfaction : The case of Sakarya University research assistans

Job satisfaction is one of the most concepts of organizations considering its behaviouralistic consequences on the employees side. Organizations have been trying to increase the job satisfaction of the employees in order to compete with the other organizations and produce high quality service. Academic institutions serve a few very important tasks like bringing up the necessary human resource for the society, providing scientific and technological development, finding solutions for the problems of the society in general, transfering culture through generations and alike. Academicians, lecturers and research assistants to be able to serve in the best way, have to be satisfied concerning their job. On the basis of this fact, the current study aimed to investigate the job satisfaction of research assistans- as the future academicians.In the first section we placed the theoretical frame of job satisfaction. Here are the description and the relevance of job satisfaction. Then we explained the factors acting upon job satisfaction, job satisfaction theories, the relation between job satisfaction and motivation, the relation between job satisfaction and efficiency, job dis-satisfaction and the consequences and job satisfaction in academic institutions. The study was carried out in the Sakarya University, through 102 research assistants. The data gathered were analyzed with the SPSS 16.0. For the analysis of the questionnaires frequency, mean, deviation, T-test, and Anova tests were applied.