Dissertation in Systemic Clinical and Health Psychology

Recommended Prerequisites

Students must have acquired the theoretical skills in systemic clinical and health psychology through the completion of the compulsory curriculum units of the 1st year of the Master's course.

Teaching Methods

Teaching methodology: a. tutorial with systematic orientation of the activities that have been properly planned and whose implementation is structured through a timeline whose execution the student should follow rigorously; b. discussion seminars at the beginning of each new section as described in syllabus.

Learning Outcomes

Objectives: To provide systematic contact with research by conducting the research project, leading the master's degree student to become familiar with applied research in the field of systemic intervention and evaluation in clinical and health contexts. To apply the basic principles of systemic research, as well as to master the basic statistical instruments for data analysis. The student should develop a "research attitude" in the professional praxis.

Learning outcomes/skills: the student should be able to 1) formulate a research problem consistent with the systemic perspective; 2) design research objectives and design; 3) collect data, process them, analyse them, interpret them; 4) produce a scientific text presenting the research results in article format and according to the APA Standards; and 5) know how to present and discuss the research results orally.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1. Conceptualization and planning of an empirical research project, in line with the systemic model in terms of content and methodology, in its different stages – principles and rules of research; ethical and deontological aspects.

2. Development of the research project: a) elaboration of the theoretical framework according to principles of bibliographic oriented search and its critical review; b) definition of the data collection protocol and definition of the sample keeping in mind research assessment tools; c) data collection, construction of the database and data entry; d) processing and analysising data; e) results description and interpretation by maintaining an interactional and systemic comprehension; f) articulation of empirical results with bibliographic information (theoretical and empirical).

3. Writing the final text accordingly with scientific writing standards   

Head Lecturer(s)

Ana Paula Pais Rodrigues Fonseca Relvas

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Written presentation of the research product (dissertation) and its oral discussion with a jury: 100.0%

Bibliography

Almeida, L. S., & Freire, T. (2008). Metodologia da investigação em Psicologia e Educação (5ª Ed.). Psiquilíbrios.

American Psychological Association (2019). The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th Ed.). Author.

Heatherington, L., Friedlander, M.L., Diamond, G.M., Escudero, V., & Pinsof, W.M. (2015). 25 years of systemic therapies research: Progress and promise. Psychotherapy Research, 25, 348–364.

Miller, R. B., & Johnson, L. N. (2014). Advanced methods in family therapy research: A focus on valitdity and change. Routledge.

Pallant, J. (2003). SPSS survival manual: A step by step guide to data analysis using SPSS for Windows. Open University Press.

Tashakkori, A. & Teddlie, C. (2003). Handbook of mixed methods in social and behavioral research. Sage Publications.

Stanton, M., & Welsh, R.(2012). Systemic thinking in couple and family psychology research and practice. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 1(1), 14-30.