European Scientific Journal February 2014 edition vol.10, No.5 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 188 THE EFFECT OF SAFETY PERCEPTION OF THE POLICE IN THE CITY OF DIYARBAKIR ON JOB SATISFACTION Mustafa Donmez, PhD Diyarbakir Police Department Abstract Job satisfaction and the factors which influence the job satisfaction level of employees has been a popular subject among scholars. The aim of this study is to reveal if the safety perception of police officers and their families affects their job satisfaction levels in the city of Diyarbakir or not. Some other factors such as work environment, coworkers, supervisor support and demographics were used as control variables. Data for this study came from an employee satisfaction survey conducted among the personnel of the Diyarbakir Police Department (DPD), Turkey. Using Bivariate Correlation and Multivariate Regression analyses, it was found that perception of safety is a significant predictor of job satisfaction. More superficially, perception of own safety has an effect as strong as supervisor support, and the perception of family members’ safety has an effect almost three times as strong as supervisor support and perception of own safety. Keywords: Job Satisfaction, work environment, safety perception, coworkers, supervisor support Introduction Job satisfaction and the factors which influence job satisfaction level of the employees has been a popular subject among scholars in sociology, management, psychology and economics in the past. Hence, it was proved that the level of job satisfaction of the employees directly affects the productivity, absenteeism, leave from job and turnover of the employees (Diaz-Serrano and Cabral Vieira, 2005; Gazioglu and Tansel, 2002). However, the low level of job attendance among personnel and the poor level of communication with the public frequently increases the importance of studying police job satisfaction one more fold. There are five important reasons for government agencies and private sectors to take into consideration job satisfaction level of their personnel permanently. From a humanitarian perspective, every human being deserves