written by Grupo Eventoplus, which shows that companies predict a 3.8% growth in the budget dedicated to the sector, which will result in an increase of 10.1% in staff.

In this sense, the Protocol professional must have an in-depth knowledge of the role of communication in organisations as a tool for the company.

2. Objectives and methodology

This work aims to analyse official degree and Master’s studies in Protocol in Spain to know their fundamental characteristics. It intends to identify:

O1: Formal aspects of these studies: name, number of credits, language, and teaching methods.

O2: The nature of the universities (public and/or private) that offers these degrees

O3: Prevalent content in the curricula

O4: Specific competences in the field of Protocol

O5: The derived professional profiles

Firstly, in-depth research on academic works and articles in indexed journals in the area of Protocol and corporate and institutional communication has been carried out. Given that this work is closely related to the professional field, other valuable sources have also been collected, such as reports and professional studies or interviews with sector representatives. This bibliographic review has allowed us to contextualise the evolution of the university studies in Protocol in Spain and carry out a background study into the published works.

Next, to carry out a content analysis of the official university degrees in Protocol, all the university undergraduate and Master’s degrees in the area have been extracted from the Registry of Universities, Centres, and Qualifications (RUCT in Spanish). This consultation was made in March 2019, and from it, primary data was obtained for the analysis sheet, such as the year of verification, the year of implementation, total credits, name of the University, and centre where it is taught and specific competencies. The same classification of degrees and masters used at the Registry of Universities, Centres and Qualifications was followed throughout this work.

It should be noted that only official studies have been taken as a reference; own degrees were excluded from the sample analysis, as well as specialist and other similar degrees offered by universities and business schools. This delimitation considers the University’s criteria: as official studies go through a verification process, monitoring and accreditation that guarantees their quality. Therefore, they have higher educational value and require a more elaborate planning process than their own degree, which depends solely on the institution that created them.

Finally, and based on this information, a content analysis was carried out based on the objectives set out for this investigation, which were collected in the table below: