Training complements (PhD in Criminology)

There are two training complements for those students who have not achieved the competencies needed in their Degree or Master’s degree. Given the wide variety of degrees allowing access to the programme and their different characteristics, it is difficult to establish the profile of the candidate who should enrol on these training complements. However, graduates in criminology can be exempted since these training complements are mandatory or core subjects in their degrees. For other students, we would have to take into account the subjects they have studied and whether they have completed enough credits according to their degree or master’s degree syllabus. Generally speaking, the following profiles can be established:

Profiles 1 and 3: The student does not have to enrol on training complements because he/she has acquired the competencies needed in his/her degree in criminology.

Profiles 2, 4, 5, and 6: We need to verify whether the student has completed 6 ECTS in Criminology and 6 ECTS in Methods of Research and Statistics in a Degree or a Master’s degree. If it is not the case, the student will have to undertake those training complements.
In any case, those students who hold an official Spanish degree of undergraduate studies, according to EU law, of a minimum of 300 ECTS must undertake these academic complements as mandatory, except in those cases where the Syllabus includes ETCS in research (equivalents to Master’s ETCS).

The students will have to enrol on such training complements during the first year of registration which will consist in passing the following subjects:

I) CRIMINOLOGY: 6 ECTS. Conceptualisation, method, object, functions, criminological models, types of criminology and explicative models of criminality are some of the topics covered in this subject, so that the student who will attain a PhD in Criminology can have a minimum of knowledge regarding the essential elements of this science. For further information, see below.

Training complement: Criminology

Subject: Criminology 6 ECTS

Target students:

  • All students who have not completed 6 ECTS of general Criminology in their undergraduate/graduate studies or Master’s degree.
  • Students holding an official degree of undergraduate studies, in accordance with EU law, of a minimum of 300 ECTS, except in those cases where the Syllabus includes credits in research training.

Competencies:

  1. To understand the complexity and different ways of committing, representing, and treating an offense.
  2. To know the foundations of the most important criminological theories.
  3. To have the ability to identify problems, create criminological situations, and study them.
  4. To have the ability to use concepts and criminological theories in order to understand the offence, the delinquent, the victim, and the responses to the offence, and the deviation.
  5. To understand the organisation, methods and general strategies of action followed by institutions, in relation with the prevention and the action against an offence.

Learning outcomes:

  • To understand the concept and the characteristics of Criminology.
  • To identify current criminological models.
  • To draft criminological premises according to current criminological models.
  • To identify the different evolutionary stages of criminological thought.
  • To know the main criminological theories and to emit value judgments under similar premises.
  • To apply similar theoretical assumptions to resolving current offences.

Doctoral training activities with their content in ECTS and the method of teaching and learning:

  1. Introduction in the classroom, following the method of lectures, of the contents and proceedings related to the acquisition of competencies of the subject (50-60%).
  2. Solution of practical cases (20-30 %).
  3. Seminar (5-15 %)
  4. Supervision session (5-15 %).

Evaluation procedure:  A final theoretical-practical test will amount to 50-60 % of the final mark. The rest would be divided depending on the activities the student undertakes: classroom presentations (10-20 %) and solution of practices (20-40 %).

Contents: The aim of this training complement is to allow the student to know the basic postulates that support Criminology, from its conceptualisation, elements, models (…). Then, the student will learn the main theories of Criminology from its origins until the 21st century, highlighting classical, positive, biologic, psychological, sociological, of the conflict and unifying approaches.

II) METHODS AND BASIC STATISTICS:  6 ECTS. This complement will empower the student to be able to design a Research Project and to make it effective, and it is therefore divided into two parts:

  • Research methods. A researcher at this level should be able to do a Research Project in Criminology. For this reason, the student has to attend some training lessons in order to cover different parts of this project and, in the end, the student has to present the research project before the responsible teacher.
  • Basic statistics applied to Criminology. The student should be able to make effective the Research Project alone. Among its contents, the student will have to create a database; to conduct descriptive analysis; to perform basic estimation tasks, including confidence intervals and to calculate the sample size to achieve a certain level of precision; to contrast hypothesis; to compare means and proportions; to carry out association studies between qualitative characters using the chi-square statistic; to conduct association studies between quantitative characters and to write reports about the results of the aforementioned analysis.

Further information about this complement is available below:

Training Complement: Methods and Basic Statistics

Credits: 6 ECTS

Target students:

  • All students who have not completed 6 ECTS of Methods of Research and Statistics in their undergraduate/graduate studies or Master’s degree.
  • Students holding an official degree of undergraduate studies, in accordance with EU law, of a minimum of 300 ECTS, except in those cases where the Syllabus includes credits in research training.

Competencies:

  1. To understand the main concepts of Science and the scientific method.
  2. To understand the methodology and the problems of a criminological research.
  3. To have the ability to differentiate among different types of variables and data, as well as its operationalisation and measure alternatives and the concepts of sensitivity, reliability and validity.
  4. Basic knowledge of models and basic research design.
  5. To understand descriptive measures and graphical representation of usual data.
  6. To have the ability to conduct document searches, to look up in different information sources, to look over statistics and to write reports.

Learning outcomes:

  • The student will be able to design research studies and to collect data related to the offence, the delinquent, the victim and the responses to the offence and to the deviation.
  • The student will be able to identify the appropriate selection method, to identify organised and semi-organised interviews as well as deep interviews; ethnography, evaluation methods and correct use of published data sources.
  • The student will be able to analyse data, to collect and order qualitative data. The student will also understand basic statistics (samples, measures of significance and knowledge of relevant software).  

Doctoral training activities with their content in ECTS and the method of teaching and learning:

  1. Lectures (2 ECTS). In these lectures the student will use the whiteboard and the computer with the aim of using all the resources available in the classroom.
  2. Teamwork and supervision sessions (1.5 ECTS). Each student is different. Therefore, it is very important to start the course with exercises and problems to be solved. Those exercises and problems will be given to different groups so that the student will be able to get to know his/her classmates and, at the same time, to start gaining more knowledge about the subjects. The number of members in the groups will depend on the number of students registered. Each group will have to resolve different exercises and the supervision sessions will be used to ask about problems or to correct mistakes. This part includes all the above-described competencies.
  3. Computer work (2.5 ECTS). In pairs, students will have to show the teacher a portfolio with exercises and problems at the end of each unit. This part covers all the above-described competencies since it includes lessons of simple exercises and applications that are very useful for the students to consolidate concepts.

Evaluation procedure:

  • Submission of exercises (20-40 %). At the end of each unit, the student should hand in the exercises to the teacher to be marked. At the end of each unit, each group has to present, in a computer support, the exercises given to that group. The mark will be the same for all the members of a group.
  • Written tests (60-80 %). At the end of each unit, an individual test on a computer will be taken in order to evaluate the skills achieved.

Contents:

  • Methodology and problems of criminological research.
  • Univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics. Fundamentals of probability. Estimation and contrast of hypothesis.
  • Designs.