An investigation of Turkish Academics' Job Satisfaction, Role Stress and Intention to Leave

Like any other professional group, academic staff always faces various problems and difficulties while performing their duties. Revealing academics' current problems to solve them and ensuring that they are able to work efficiently and peacefully requires extensive research. Therefore, this study investigated the problems of academic staff working at Turkish universities and aimed to determine the current levels of job satisfaction, intention to leave, and role stress formed by role ambiguity and role conflict. The study also aimed to find out whether job satisfaction, role stress, and intention to leave differ according to academics' demographic characteristics. The gender, age, marital status, number of children, academic title, academic seniority, seniority at the university, type of university, field of study, department, administrative role, conducting academic studies abroad, teaching at different universities, average number of weekly courses in the last 3 years, and number of publications in the last 3 years were the demographic variables investigated in the study. The research was conducted on 3578 academics across Turkey. The results showed that academics' level of job satisfaction and role conflicts were moderate, their level of role ambiguity and intention to leave were low, and their level of role stress was low to moderate. It was also found that job satisfaction, role stress, and the intention to leave differed by some demographic variables.