Doctoral Program in Psychology 2024–2025

The students of the program acquire the basic competences indicated in article 5 of Royal Decree 99/2011 on doctorate. They are the following:

1. Systematic understanding of their field of study and mastery of research skills and methods related to that field.
2. Ability to conceive, design or create, implement and adopt a substantial process of research or creation.
3. Ability to contribute to the expansion of the frontiers of knowledge through original research.
4. Ability to perform a critical analysis and evaluation and synthesis of new and complex ideas.
5. Ability to communicate with the academic and scientific community and with society in general about their fields of knowledge in the modes and languages commonly used in their international scientific community.
6. Ability to promote, in academic and professional contexts, scientific, technological, social, artistic or cultural advancement within a society based on knowledge.
   

The RD 99/2011 highlights the high professional training of doctors in various fields, especially those that require creativity and innovation. Therefore, the doctors of the program will have acquired, at least, personal skills and abilities to:

1. Develop in contexts in which there is little specific information.
2. Find the key questions that must be answered to solve a complex problem.
3. Design, create, develop and undertake innovative and innovative projects in their field of knowledge.
4. Work both as a team and independently in an international or multidisciplinary context.
5. Integrate knowledge, face complexity and formulate judgements with limited information.
6. The criticism and intellectual defence of solutions.
   

No further additional competences are foreseen. 

The requirements for access to doctorate studies are set in RD 99/2011 and can be consulted in the corresponding Instruction of the Doctorate School (pdf). In general, an official Spanish Bachelor's and Master's degrees or equivalent are required, with a minimum global extension of 300 ECTS credits.

Candidates with university degrees issued by a country of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) may request admission directly (info). If the degree is issued by a country outside the EHEA, the application for access with a non-homologated foreign degree must be submitted (info).

Those interested can expand their information in the administrative section of the Doctoral School (web) or the administration of the program (see contact data in the program general information section).

Applicant profile

To request admission to the Doctoral Program in Psychology, the ideal profile is that of an applicant who has previously concluded a Master’s Degree in the area of Psychology, preferably specialized in research. Access shall also be granted to students whose diploma is associated with other subjects in the areas of social sciences and health, provided that they fulfil all necessary requirements for admission, as ascertained by the Academic Committee of the Doctoral Program.

In any case, in order to pursue studies in the Doctoral Program in Psychology, the students shall be required to possess:

a) specific scientific knowledge in the area of Psychology

b) the technical, instrumental, and methodological skills associated with social sciences and health, particularly with Psychology

c) a level of fluency in English equivalent to Level B1 (CEFR).

Selection criteria

All applicants should display a clear interest in carrying out their psychology doctorate in a field of knowledge akin to the lines and research groups of this Program. The Academic Committee shall study each application individually, thereby allowing in exceptional cases for the admission of students with other profiles when considered justified.

When the applicant has been previously involved in scientific activity, that experience shall be evaluated accordingly, along with the applicant’s motivation in developing work dynamics that lead to the effective conclusion of a doctoral thesis. Applicants shall detail their previous academic experience and their research interests by presenting the following documents to the Academic Committee for examination:

(a) A presentation letter of no more than 1,000 words, containing:

- the specific motivations that lead the candidate to apply to the Program

- a description of the candidate’s research interests.

(b) A curriculum vitae that includes the following information:

- complete residence address, contact telephone, and e-mail address

- the Master’s or postgraduate programs and courses already concluded by the applicant, related with the research interests expressed in the presentation letter;

- the candidate’s previous scientific production (when applicable)

(c) the candidate’s academic transcripts of record at the Master’s and Postgraduate level

(d) complete names, institutional affiliation, postal and electronic addresses of all reference providers

(e) national identity card or passport

(f) proof with corresponding documentation if the candidate mentions other points of merit.

In case of doubt regarding a student’s adequacy for the Doctoral Program, a personal interview may be carried out with one of the professors who form part of the Program’s Academic Committee.

If the demand for study vacancies exceeds the offer, the Academic Committee shall establish an order of precedence for applicants by evaluating their CV and their motivation to study in the Program according to the following weighting criteria:

1. Academic record in Grado (Bachelor’s) and Master’s studies (60 points).

2. Research experience: CV (including scholarships, papers presented at conferences, publications, and research papers) (30 points).

2.1. Scholarships (up to 10 points):

- Competitive pre-doctoral scholarship (FPU/FPI): 10 points.

- Other scholarships: maximum 5 points.

2.2. Publications (up to 10 points)

- Publications in JCR journals: 4 points per publication.

- Non-JCR publications: 2 points per publication.

2.3. Papers presented at conferences (up to 5 points)

- Papers at national conferences: 2 points.

- Papers at international conferences: 3 points.

2.4. Theses (Bachelor’s or Masters) (up to 5 points)

3. Other merits (mastery of the English language, motivation to be admitted in the Program) (10 points).

Each subsection thereof shall have a maximum of 5 points. Thus:

- Mastery of English: B1 = 2 points; B2 = 3 points; C1 = 4 points; C2 = 5 points

- In the Motivation subsection, the Academic Committee shall evaluate and grant up to 5 points for the applicant’s exposition of his/her motivation to enter the Doctorate Program.

In order to be admitted to the Program, the applicant shall be required to surpass a minimum of 30 points.

The Academic Committee reserves the right to consider an applicant inadequate on the basis of research theme, interests, research career or justifications expressed in the motivation letter.

The ideal applicant profile is that of the holder of an official Master’s Degree in research in Psychology or in General Health Psychology. Such a profile does not require additional course attendance or training.

Applicants with profiles that vary from the optimum (see above) shall be required to attend complementary training courses as stipulated by the Doctoral Program Academic Committee. These will consist in a training period of up to 12 credits in psychology-related subjects and in research methodology in Psychology, via courses pertaining to the University of Zaragoza Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology or the Master’s Degree in General Health Psychology, or, as the case may be, pertaining to other equivalent subjects offered by the University of Zaragoza. Proposals suggested by the student and/or thesis director may also be taken into account.

Generally speaking, those applicants with profiles that depart from the ideal (see above) shall be required to pass the following courses:

- Applicants with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and an official Master’s Degree in the area of Psychology shall be required to attend complementary courses in research methodology.

- Applicants with a Bachelor’s (Grado) in another specialty and with an official Master’s in Psychological Research shall be required to attend and pass complementary courses in subjects pertaining to the discipline of Psychology.

- Applicants with other profiles shall be required to attend and pass complementary courses proposed by the Academic Committee of the Doctoral Program on the basis of the applicant’s academic record. 

Doctoral students, as researchers in training and students of the University of Zaragoza, have to formalize every year the enrollment with the corresponding rights to the academic tutorship while continuing their doctoral training. The enrollment period will be set  in the academiccalendar approved each year by the Doctoral School. 

As a general rule, enrollment will be done online through the Secretaría Virtual ofthe University of Zaragoza. Previously a personal identification number (NIP) and password will have been obtained in the identity management service. Face-to-face registration will be allowed to those who cannot do it online, by going to the doctoral school during public service hours. PhD students must submit every year in which they enroll, documentation about their previous studies, depending on whether they have been taken in countries of the European Education Area or outside that space.

Full and up-to-date information on the enrollment procedure, including key points, is provided on the website of the Doctoral School, as well as prices, discounts and insurance, legalization and translation of documents and some others practical details.

The procedures for the supervision of doctoral students are set in article 11 of Royal Decree 99/2011, which regulates doctoral studies and the rules about Thesis (Reglamento sobre Tesis Doctorales de la Universidad de Zaragoza). The doctoral student admitted to the program has to enrol each academic year in academic tutelage at the University of Zaragoza. The Academic Committee of the program will assign a Thesis Director and a tutor, who may or may not be the same. The Thesis Director will be the person in charge of the overall management of the doctoral student's research tasks, of the coherence and adequacy of the training activities, of the impact and novelty in his/her field of the subject of the doctoral thesis and of the guide in other projects and activities where the doctoral student is involved. The tutor is responsible for the adaptation of the training and the research activity to the principles of the program and the Doctoral School and will ensure the interaction of the doctoral student with the Academic Committee of the program, the body responsible for supervising the progress of the research and training and the authorization of the thesis presentation of each doctoral student of the program.

The supervisory functions of the doctoral students will be documented in the Doctorate Letter which, once the registration is made, will be signed by the doctoral student, its tutor and its director, the program coordinator and the director of the Doctoral School. Those interested can expand the information on the thesis supervision in the administrative headquarters of the program (see contact information in the general information of the program) or by consulting the program coordinator.

The follow-up of the training process leading to the presentation of the doctoral thesis is carried out through the research plan and the doctoral student's document of activities. The research plan is presented before the end of the first year of enrolment and includes, at least, the methodology to be used and the objectives to be achieved, as well as the means and the temporal planning to achieve it. The plan may be improved and detailed later and must be endorsed by the Director and the tutor. The document of activities is the register of all the activities -research stays, courses, attendance to congresses, or others- that the doctorate carries out from his enrolment until the presentation of the doctoral thesis. Annually, the Academic Committee of the program will evaluate the follow-up of the research plan together with the document of activities. The positive evaluation will be an essential requirement to continue in the program. In the case of a negative evaluation, the doctoral student must be evaluated again within a maximum period of six months. Those interested can expand this information in the administrative headquarters of the program (see contact information in the general information of the program) or by consulting the program coordinator.

The Doctoral School offers an annual series of voluntary activities for all doctoral students. This formation has a transversal and interdisciplinary nature. The offer is dynamic and covers the following formative aspects: communication (oral and written), access and information management, and skills for a future social and professional performance.  Information about the activities, admission and enrolment can be found in the website of the Doctoral School  (info).

General training plan:

Full-time students shall be required to complete between a minimum of 25 and a maximum of 40 hours of training activities. These activities can be transversal and/or specific, and are to be chosen from the list of activities on this page.

Part-time students shall be required to complete between a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 30 hours of training activities. They can be transversal and/or specific, and are to be chosen from the list of activities on this page.

Training activities:

Doctoral students enrolled in doctoral programs benefit from mobility aids established in various national and international calls. The calls for the Erasmus + program stand out.

In the Erasmus + Studies mode, doctoral students can choose a wide range of destinations, since most of the agreements signed by the University of Zaragoza with other universities include places for PhD students of all branches.

In the Erasmus + Stays / Practices in companies modality, PhD students access two calls: the one from the University of Zaragoza and the one carried out by the Iberus International Campus of Excellence for the universities that comprise it, the one from Zaragoza among them.

Other mobility calls are specifically designed for Latin American students and for international stays of students with predoctoral contracts. The mobility of doctoral students of the University of Zaragoza is also encouraged with cotutela agreements signed with foreign universities.

The Doctoral School of the University of Zaragoza has rules and procedures to achieve its various goals, which have been written with the agreement of the different levels of the Doctoral School, and are published on its website.

The regulations section of the Doctoral School website contains other important regulations, both national and of the University of Zaragoza, such as RD 99/2011 por el que se regulan las enseñanzas oficiales de doctorado, el Reglamento de los Estudios de Doctorado (2012) y el Reglamento sobre tesis doctorales (2014).

Rules of duration and permanence in the doctorate are established in Instrucción de23 de mayo de 2018 de la Escuela de Doctorado relativa al acceso, admisión,dedicación y permanencia en los estudios de doctorado de la Universidad deZaragoza (R.D. 99/2011).

Full-time thesis should be complete in three years, from the date of admission to the doctoral program, although the Academic Committee of the program may authorize the extension of this period for one more year. Part-time doctoral students will have five years from their admission to the presentation of the thesis, and the Academic Committee may authorize an extension for two more years. Exceptionally, an additional year of extension can be added.

PhD candidates may request a change in dedication (full-time / part-time) as well as the temporary withdrawal for justified reasons of the Academic Committee. They can cause a definitive withdrawal and see their file closed in these cases: if the available time to deposit the thesis is exceeded or if they receive two consecutive negative evaluations of the research plan.

The academic year is governed by the deadlines established in the specific Doctoral School´s academic calendar.

This calendar sets the periods of request for entry, admission to the programs, enrollment at the University of Zaragoza, as well as how the students must present every year the research plan and the activities document, deadlines for defending doctoral theses, etc.

The Doctoral School website publishes the calendar of the current course as well as the two previous courses (info).

The University of Zaragoza, the Department of Psychology and Sociology, the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (Teruel campus), and the research groups and the professors of the Doctorate Program all work together to provide the best resources and services to help the doctoral student correctly elaborate his/her doctoral thesis.

Faculty of Social and Human Sciences particularly holds a considerable number of services and material resources at the disposal of the Doctoral Program to ensure that the doctoral student can elaborate his/her thesis with a maximum guarantee of quality.

In the following link you can consult a list of services and infrastructures available at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences: http://fcsh.unizar.es. The main available resources are the following:

• Classrooms and seminar rooms: the Faculty houses a sufficient number of classrooms and seminar rooms of all sizes, as well as auditoriums and IT rooms. Further conference rooms and auditoriums for thesis defense are available in the Vice-Rectory building and in the Colegio Mayor Pablo Serrano.
• Psychology laboratories. The Faculty has specialized laboratories for different research tasks in the area of Psychology: the Observation Laboratory featuring a recording system and unidirectional mirrors, and the Psychobiology Laboratory with three isolated experiment cabinets.
  
• Equipment: our installations feature the necessary technology, including IT systems, projectors, audio, video, and videoconferencing.
  
• Library, Documentation and Test Archive (Docimoteca): The University of Zaragoza libraries provide easy access and long opening hours. They offer a wide range of services including book lending, access to collections in paper and electronic format, rooms with computers, rooms for individual study, and rooms for collaborative projects. The Teruel Campus Library offers students access to documentation collections, bibliographical databases, and scientific journals related to the Doctoral Program in Psychology. It also houses a Docimoteca (psychological test library), where professors and students can borrow from a large collection of psychological tests.