This Handbook presents established and innovative perspectives on involving older adults as co-creators in ageing research. It reorients research and policy toward more inclusive and adequate designs that capture the voices and needs of older adults.
The Handbook:
- introduces types of participatory approaches in ageing research;
- highlights key methodological aspects of these approaches;
- gives insights from projects across different cultural contexts and academic disciplines, showing ways in which older participants can be involved in co-designing different stages of the research cycle;
- examines key issues to consider when involving older participants at each step of the research process;
- includes the voices of older adults directly;
- draws out conclusions and points ways forward for future research.
This Handbook will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in the field of ageing and/ or participatory methods, as well as for those policy stakeholders in the fields of ageing and demographic change, social and public policy, or health and wellbeing who are interested in involving older adults in policy processes. It will be useful for third-sector advocacy organizations and international non-governmental and public agencies working either in citizen involvement/participation or the ageing sector.
This Handbook presents established and innovative perspectives on involving older adults as co-creators in ageing research. It reorients research and policy toward more inclusive and adequate designs that capture the voices and needs of older adults.
1. Participatory approaches in ageing research: an overview
Part 1: Methodological aspects of participatory approaches in ageing
research
2. Role of reflexivity in challenging participation inequality in
participatory approaches with older adults
3. The willingness of older adults to engage in participatory research:
Empirical findings from Switzerland
4. Involving older adults in the data analysis process
5. Participatory Research and Development Approaches in Applied Ageing
Research
Part 2: Designing research together with older adults
6. Setting the Research Agenda Together as a Form of Productive Ageing.
Rationale and Exemplary Cases
7. Co-creating culturally nuanced social measures with indigenous elders
8. Tensions in transformations: Participatory approaches in sustainable
energy technology projects in the UK and India
Part 3: Collecting data together with older adults
9. Promenade Parlante: Intergenerational Dialogue, Urban Scenography, and
Co-Creation
10. Older individuals active participation in data-collection in diverse
settings in South Africa
11. Challenges and opportunities of new product co-creation with older
consumers
Part 4: Analysing and validating results together with older adults
12. Experience of member check with older adults in
non-participatory-research-culture
13. We talked about years that I experienced as well! The role of age in
the participatory design of phone befriending services in Estonia
14. When care is moving in participatory approaches to elicit needs and
desires when healthcare has become a natural part of your daily life
15. Older Adults in Research: A Participatory Approach to Sexuality and
Intimacy Based on an Example from Poland
Part 5: Disseminating results together
16. Promoting civic participation: comparing three co-produced models of
lifelong learning and cultural engagement in the UK
17. Making graphic magazines with people living with dementia: the case for
participatory dissemination
18. The Later Life Audio and Radio Co-operative: creating sustainable
communities from participatory action research
19. The Living Library A participatory approach to societal research impact
Part 6: Doing the whole research process together
20. The Belgian Ageing Studies: peer research as an instrument to empower
older people
21. A service provider approach to rights-based research
22. Patient partner engagement in dementia research during the COVID-19
pandemic and beyond
Part 7: Voices and experiences of older co-researchers
23. Working together to research the everyday lives of people living with
dementia and those supporting them
24. Co-creating research: Co-researchers parallel conversations with Mori
elders
25. Co-creating research: co-researchers` parallel conversations from the
participatory action research project CareComLabs
26. Doing Research Together insights from the intergenerational project
DigiGen in Germany
27. Co-creating research: co-researchers parallel conversations from the
project SEVEN Socially Excluded Older Adults: Voices and Experiences
Part 8: Future perspectives in the field of participatory approaches in
ageing research
28. Participation for Mission-oriented Innovation: A Governance Perspective
29. Employing Citizen Science to understand the contemporary needs of older
adults accessing and using technology in a pandemic
30. Co-producing knowledge: reflections from a community-based participatory
research project on caring communities to strengthen ageing in place
31. Epistemology and Methodology of Participatory Research with Older Adults:
A Comparison of Four Age-friendly City National Experiences Myriam Leleu,
Mario Paris, Hugo
32. Participatory approaches in ageing research: Future perspectives
Anna Urbaniak is a social sciences researcher with expertise in life-course transitions, the re/production of social inequalities across the life course, and participatory approaches in ageing research. She is a founder of PAAR: Research Network on Participatory Approaches in Ageing Research and a chair of COST Action CA22167 on Participatory Approaches with Older Adults (PAAR- net). She is also a co-chair of the Research Network on Ageing in Europe (European Sociological Association). She is working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Vienna (Austria) and Jagiellonian University (Poland), and as an Assistant Professor at Cracow University of Economics (Poland).
Anna Wanka is a sociologist and critical gerontologist interested in the social construction of age. Her areas of expertise comprise the social practices of un/doing age, life course transitions/retirement and the re/production of social inequalities across the life course, ageing and technologies, age-friendly cities and communities, mixed-methods, and participatory research. She is co-founder of PAAR: Research Network on Participatory Approaches in Ageing Research and a co-chair of COST Action CA22167 on Participatory Approaches with Older Adults (PAAR- net). She is working as a research group leader at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
