THE EFFECTS OF EMOTIONAL REGULATION AND POLITICAL PERCEPTION ON JOB SATISFACTION: AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH STUDY IN THE TURKISH HEALTH SECTOR

This study aims to find out the relationship between emotion regulation, political perception and job satisfaction by using the Structural Equation Model and to examine whether demographic factors have an effect on this relationship. To test the model, other than the demographic variables, a 19-question scale was applied to 699 employees in the health sector in Diyarbakır, which is located in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. To analyze the collected data, Structural Equation Modeling method was used with the aid of AMOS 18.0 software. A positive linear relationship between emotion regulation and job satisfaction and a negative relationship between political perception and job satisfaction were determined. Besides these two latent variables, emotion regulation and political perception; it was found that age, sector and title contributed to explain variances in the job satisfaction variable which was at 34%. Additionally, some differences in terms of demographic variables were found. The job satisfaction of employees working in private hospitals was higher than those working in public hospitals; the emotion regulation ability of employees working in public hospitals was higher than those working in private hospitals; the emotion regulation ability of employees between the age 41 and 50 was higher than those who were younger; the emotion regulation ability of employees who had undergraduate degrees was higher than those who had graduate degrees.     Keywords: emotion regulation, political perception, job satisfaction, structural equation model, health sector.