Contribution Participatory Methodologies and Generational Research

This paper debates and describes how the use of participatory methodologies were useful and flexible to engage and access the digital attitudes and practices of different generations of participants - from young people to older people - involved in two research projects in Portugal: DiCi-Educa and SMaRT-EU. The paper also describes the methodological decisions and how these impacted in participants involvement as how they adjusted to different contexts, including disconnecting settings and COVID-19 and its digital challenges, in DiCi-Educa. Both projects used workshops as an active and participatory methodology to engage the different generations with transformations during COVID-19 pandemic context. Despite the unpredictable difficulties, the use of the online environment also promoted positive ways of better engaging with the participants, namely in the SMaRT-EU project. Both experiences were very enriching to prepare a third project we present in the final part of the paper: YouNDigital.