Online Investigation Course – Learn Professional Investigative Techniques
Master the art of investigation with this practical online course designed for aspiring investigators, researchers, journalists, and professionals in law, security, or academia.
Whether you’re investigating people, places, events, or complex issues, this course teaches you how to uncover the truth using structured investigative techniques.
You’ll explore how to gather reliable data, conduct interviews, use surveillance, and critically analyse evidence. While this course includes a focus on criminal investigations, the skills you gain are transferable to a wide range of careers—from private investigation and investigative journalism to academic research and financial or legal analysis.
What You’ll Learn
- How to investigate people, events, or locations using structured methods
- Techniques for data collection, surveillance, and interviewing
- How to analyse and assess evidence for accuracy and reliability
- The core principles behind criminal investigations
- How investigative skills apply to journalism, research, finance, law, and more
Who is this Course for?
- Aspiring Private Investigators
- Journalists and Media Researchers
- Criminology Students and Law Enthusiasts
- Academic Researchers and Writers
- Professionals in Legal, Security, or Financial Analysis roles
- Anyone curious about uncovering facts and building evidence-based conclusions
Course Structure
There are 9 lessons in this course:
1. Scope and Nature of Investigative Techniques
- What is Investigation
- Important skills and traits
- Personality traits – flexibility, self motivation, communication, active listening
- How to be a good Active Listener
- Observational skills – techniques to improve observation skills
- Problem solving
- Research skills
- Interviewing
- Critical thinking
- Emotional and Social Intelligence
- Empathy
- Collective evidence
- Courage
- Investigative bodies – fraud, cybercrime3, missing persons
- Professions -health, legal
- International Investigative bodies – U.N., Interpol, Amnesty International
2. Records Searching
- Record searching skills
- Documents – superficial search, deeper search
- Types of records -official, transitory
- Why investigators carry out records searches
- Conducting records searches
- Offline searches
- Online searches
- Types of documents
- Primary documents – national identification numbers, public records
- Secondary documents – print media
3. Surveillance
- Ethics of surveillance
- Bias in surveillance
- Surveillance methods
- Types of surveillance – direct, pre-constructive, reconstructive
- Physical surveillance – stakeout, mobile, aerial
- Physical surveillance tips
- Technical and electronic surveillance
- GPS tracking,
- Facial recognition
- Bugging & Cyber surveillance
- Doing surveillance
4. Interviewing
- Interview skills
- Interview versus interrigation
- Why use interviews
- Open and closed questions
- Types of interviews
- Advantages of interviews
- Quantitative versus qualitative data
- Limitations of interviews
- Planning an interview -background information, Number of interviews,Gender, Time of day, Venue, keeping records
- Designing an interview
- Setting goals examples – journalistic interview, criminal interview, academic interview
- Choosing questions
- Questions to avoid
- Uncovering lies, fabrications, misleading responses
- Gathering data
5. Surveys
- What are surveys
- Ethical issues
- Survey Formats
- The survey interview – face to face, telephone, focus groups, survey panels
- Survey design
- Research questions
- Target Audience
- Sampling, Administration, Analysis
- Surveys as an investigative tool
- Validity
- Survey limitations
6. Analysis of Evidence
- What is evidence
- Analysing evidence
- physical evidence -blood, fingerprint, DNA, impression evidence
- Cyber or digital evidence
- Behavioural evidence
7. Applications – Public Sector
- What is the public sector
- Public sector investigations -eg. fraud
- People involved
8. Applications – Private Sector
- The private sector
- Private sector investigations
- Discrimination
- Overseas money trails
- Embezelment
9. Applications – Media and Online
- Media and online investigations
- Computer crimes
- Common scams
- The dark web
- Online investigation techniques
- Ways to deal with online and media crimes