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When we started work on the ODYSSEY project, we asked ourselves one fundamental question: what do we actually know about effectively teaching older adults financial and digital safety? We didn't want to rely on intuition. We wanted hard data. So we turned to the most rigorous tool available to researchers | a systematic review of the academic literature.
We used the Elicit platform, which searches a database of more than 138 million academic publications. We entered queries covering adult cybersecurity education, protection against financial fraud, teaching methodology for older adults, and fraud-prevention programmes aimed at seniors. After discarding studies that were irrelevant, duplicated, or too narrow in scope | 25 solid sources remained. And these became the foundation of our educational approach.
What we know | the good news
Let's start with the positives, because there's no shortage of them. Research on adult education | andragogy in particular, the science of teaching adults | provides concrete, practical guidance. We actually know quite a lot about HOW to teach older adults. The problem is that we rarely translate that knowledge into practice.
A multi-method approach
One of the strongest conclusions from the review is that older adults learn most effectively when teaching methods are varied. A lecture isn't enough. A brochure isn't enough. Jurczyk-Romanowska (2016) showed in her research on digital education for older adults that combining different formats | practical exercises, group discussion, visual materials and individual work | produces significantly better results than any single method. This multi-method approach became one of the pillars of the ODYSSEY programme.
Gamification and game elements
Another finding concerns gamification. Contrary to the stereotype that "older adults don't like games", the research shows quite the opposite. Gamification elements | points, badges, group competition, rewarded tasks | increase older adults' engagement and improve retention of material. Lisowska and Łojko (2025) emphasise that gamification in senior education works especially well when embedded in realistic contexts. In other words: a game where an older adult recognises a fake text message is more effective than an abstract quiz asking about "cyber threats".
Small groups
The third important factor is group size. Research consistently shows that education for older adults is most effective in groups of 8 to 15 people. In such small groups, participants feel safe | they can ask questions, admit what they don't know, and help each other. Large lectures for 50 or 100 people can be inspiring, but rarely lead to lasting behaviour change. That's why ODYSSEY plans workshops in groups of no more than 12.
Personalising the pace of learning
The fourth conclusion concerns pace. Older adults aren't a homogeneous group | among people 60+ you'll find both people who use a smartphone fluently and those who have never used the internet. Research clearly shows that effective education must account for these differences. Materials should be available for self-paced learning (so everyone can go at their own speed), and workshops should allow for extra support for people who need more time.
What we don't know | seven gaps
Now for the less optimistic part. When we moved from the question "how to teach?" to the question "what to teach?", it turned out the academic literature has serious gaps. We identified seven critical gaps | areas where older adults face real threats, but no one has developed proven educational programmes for them.
Gap 1: Online anti-fraud education
Online scams are one of the biggest threats to older adults in the 21st century. Phishing, fake shops, social media scams | the list is long. And yet we didn't find a single peer-reviewed study evaluating the effectiveness of a specific educational programme teaching older adults to recognise online scams. Awareness campaigns exist, brochures exist, but no one has rigorously measured whether these efforts actually change recipients' behaviour. This is a surprising gap, given the scale of the problem.
Gap 2: Phone scams
The "grandchild scam", the fake police officer, the fake bank employee | these scenarios are well known to police and the media. But in the academic literature? Silence. We didn't find experimental studies testing the effectiveness of programmes teaching older adults how to react to suspicious calls. We know that phone scams are one of the most common types of crime against older people. We don't know how to protect them most effectively.
Gap 3: The psychology of manipulation
Scammers are effective not because they have advanced technology. They're effective because they understand psychology. They use time pressure ("You must act NOW!"), authority ("This is Police Commissioner calling"), fear ("Your grandson had an accident") and isolation ("Don't tell anyone"). These psychological mechanisms are well described in social psychology. But almost no one teaches older adults how to recognise them. We didn't find educational programmes that systematically cover manipulation techniques and teach defences against them in the context of financial scams.
Gap 4: Personal finance management
Financial education for older adults is a topic that appears in many countries' public policies. But when we look for specific, evaluated programmes teaching people 60+ to manage a household budget, recognise risky financial products, or plan retirement spending | the results are surprisingly modest. Most existing financial literacy programmes target younger adults. Older adults have different needs, different experiences and different risks | but educational programmes don't reflect that.
Gap 5: Artificial intelligence and new threats
This may be the most alarming gap. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the fraud landscape | deepfakes, voice cloning, automatically generated personalised phishing messages. Meanwhile, not a single educational programme for older adults addresses AI-related threats. Zero. Nothing. This is understandable, since technology develops faster than academic research. But it also means older adults have been left completely alone with this issue.
Gap 6: Long-term evaluation
Even the educational programmes that do exist are rarely evaluated over the long term. Most studies measure participants' knowledge immediately after training | and stop there. But the question of whether an older adult still applies safety rules three, six, or twelve months after training remains unanswered. Without long-term evaluation, we don't know whether our programmes truly protect people | or just give them a temporary sense of competence.
Gap 7: The Hungarian context
ODYSSEY is a Polish-Hungarian project, so we wanted to find research from both countries. While Poland has at least a handful of studies (though even here they're few), we found practically nothing in the Hungarian context. The lack of research on educating older adults in digital and financial safety in Hungary means local older adults not only lack proven programmes | they don't even have a knowledge base on which such programmes could be built.
The only benchmark: the Czech Nedame se
Throughout our entire review, one programme stood out as exemplary. The Czech project "Nedame se" ("We won't give in"), described by Mazalova (2016), is the only fraud-prevention programme for older adults in Central and Eastern Europe to undergo a rigorous scientific evaluation.
The programme involved 260 older adults and was based on a simulation method | participants took part in realistic staged scams, then discussed their reactions with facilitators. The results were impressive: after completing the programme, participants showed twice the caution toward suspicious situations compared to the control group. What's more, the effect held up in follow-up studies.
Nedame se showed that safety education for older adults can be effective | provided it's practical, engaging, and based on real scenarios. This programme became one of our key benchmarks in designing the ODYSSEY workshops.
How does ODYSSEY respond to these gaps?
Our project isn't another academic report that ends with the words "further research is needed". ODYSSEY is an attempt to practically fill the gaps we identified. Here's how we do it:
First, our online course covers all seven areas we identified as "blind spots". The modules cover online scams, phone scams, the psychology of manipulation, financial management, AI-related threats | all in language accessible to people 60+.
Second, we use a multi-method approach | we combine educational videos, interactive exercises, checklists, infographics and in-person workshops. Every older adult can choose the learning format that suits them best.
Third, our workshops are inspired by the Czech Nedame se. We plan scam simulations | realistic scenarios in which participants experience attempted manipulation in safe conditions, then discuss it with educators.
Fourth, we operate in both countries | Poland and Hungary | which will let us gather comparative data and, we hope, help fill the gap in the Hungarian context.
And finally | we plan evaluation. Not just "post-workshop" satisfaction surveys, but measuring actual behaviour change among participants over a longer period.
We know that 25 studies are only a beginning. But we also know that waiting for further decades of research means that the next generations of older adults will remain unprotected. ODYSSEY is an attempt to act here and now | based on the best available knowledge, but not limited to what we already know.