Health and Psychology

There is an obvious need for research training in the health and psychology field from a multidisciplinary perspective; with the Health and Psychology doctoral programme, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) aim to answer this need.

Key Features

The Health and Psychology programme’s overall goal is to make sure students develop the competencies required to successfully carry out research in the fields of health and psychology. More specifically, our goal is to train researchers who are capable of asking meaningful research questions and whose solution contributes to improving people’s health and well-being. In addition, we want them to be capable of developing research projects that pursue a truly transformational purpose and train them to provide methodical, innovative and searching answers to the questions raised.

Accordingly, our wish is to train motivated, creative, original researchers who wish to advance in solving significant problems in the field of study, and whose solution will impact positively on the population’s well-being.

The doctoral programme divided into 7 research lines which address the following topics: e-health; psychological aspects and tools; neuroscience and language disorders; nutrition and lifestyles; healthy work environments; community care and health; gender, health and sociocultural models. We have both experience and research projects in all these fields. Different thesis proposals are offered for each of the research lines.

The Health and Psychology programme from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is run by the UOC Doctoral School and is closely linked with the research experience of the faculty and research staff at the Faculty of Health Sciences, the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences and the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute.

Courses included

• A personalized training plan will be set out for each student, based on prior knowledge and research abilities, particularly in research methodologies, and the student’s research interests. This training plan may include the performance of bridging courses. It may also require students’ participation in different activities included in the doctoral programme.
• The bridging courses are master’s degree courses that are related with the doctoral programme, generally with a high degree of specificity, which may help students progress in their research. We recommend that students take them during the first year (first and second semesters). We have an extensive list to cover all students’ needs. It is also possible to consider taking other courses (not included in the list) from similar programmes, if they are considered suitable.