The perceptions concerning job satisfactions of the administrative staff at universities (A sample of Gazi Üniversity)

This study aims to determine factors which affect the job satisfaction of administrative staff at Gazi University and to investigate whether there is a significant difference between the demographic characteristics of the administrative staff and their perceptions concerning job satisfaction. It consists of five chapters. In the first chapter, the research problem is explained and the purpose and significance of the study, assumptions, limitations, and definition of terms are presented. In the second chapter, theoretical information about job satisfaction is given. The concept and definition of job satisfaction; the benefits of job satisfaction regarding the employees, managers and the organization; the factors that impact job satisfaction; theoretical approaches to job satisfaction; and the various dimensions of job satisfaction that are considered are presented theoretically. In the third chapter, general information about the study is presented, as well as the research method, sampling methods and measurement tools. The perceptions of the administrative staff and the relationship between various factors and job satisfaction are examined. Screening model was used for this study the screening research is described as the research approaches which aim to determine a previous or actual situation as it exists. In this research, ?Job Satisfaction Scale? conducted among 365 administrative staff at Gazi University in 2011-2012. In the fourth chapter, a field research that consists of two sections was conducted amongst administrative staff of Gazi University. In the first part of the questionnaire, which is prepared based on the previous studies, the perceptions related to the demographic characteristics of the employees are investigated. Also, in this section, the demographic characteristics that show significant difference in the t test and variance vivi test analysis are used as control variables; and various dimensions of job satisfaction and their impact on each job satisfaction dimension are examined. Accordingly, in order to measure the level of overall job satisfaction, the minimum, maximum, arithmetic mean and standard deviation are calculated first for analysing data. In order to determine whether job satisfaction of the administrative staff differs based on several variables, t test, one-way analysis of variance, multiple comparison LSD test are used and the results are interpreted. As a result of this analysis, it is found that the job title does not make a difference on job satisfaction, but gender, age, education and length of employment have significant impact on overall job satisfaction. In this respect, male administrative staff has higher job satisfaction compared to female administrative staff. 18-25 age group has the highest job satisfaction among the other age groups. Job satisfaction decreases with increasing education level. Based on the length of employment, significant differences are observed in perceptions of job satisfaction Some of the findings of this research on job satisfaction are: Among the five dimensions of job satisfaction that are considered, job satisfaction is the highest in the "management" dimension and it is the lowest in the "colleague" dimension. In the fifth chapter, in the light of the findings of this research, some recommendations are provided for the future research on job satisfaction. Key words: Job satisfaction, University, Administrative staff