In the context of the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 disease, many countries established protection measures. In Peru, face-to-face studies were suspended and virtualized education was established as an alternative. Doctoral students took advantage of the new way of on-line learning, even without being prepared for it. The need to have categories of perception on virtualized doctorate courses was raised. The objective was to design an online perception instrument on virtual learning of doctoral studies in the context of COVID-19. The research was qualitative with phenomenological design, theoretical validation and expert opinion. The sample was non-probabilistic and a posteriori. In-depth interview was applied. Categorization based on the saturation principle and the triangulation technique were used. 40 units of analysis, 20 study categories, 42 subcategories and 30 items were obtained. It was concluded that there are four categories to design the online instrument: quality, characteristics, advantages and satisfaction.