A Socio-Technical Systems Approach to Reciprocal Grandparent–Grandchild Participation in Caregiving Families

Grandparents often take sustained responsibility for school escort, daily care, safety supervision, and emotional companionship, yet frequent contact does not necessarily produce reciprocal participation. This study treats interaction between grandparents and grandchildren as a socio-technical system and uses interviews and field observations for the systemic diagnosis, integrates the Framework Method, Soft Systems Methodology, Interpretive Structural Modelling and MICMAC analysis for design translation, and separately conducts a standardized-stimulus online concept appraisal. Fifteen factors formed a six-level hierarchy that converged on one proximal mechanism: the absence of reciprocal and complementary tasks. The diagnosis informed four concepts for domestic, mobility, public-space, and embodied-recreation settings. In the concept-stage public appraisal (N = 261), all four concepts received high ratings, but the composite evaluation indices did not detect robust differentiation after multiplicity correction. The only false-discovery-rate (FDR)-corrected item difference concerned whether grandparents’ knowledge, experience, or judgement had a clear role in the task; the mobility collaboration game scored highest. Exploratory indirect association findings were sensitive to model specification and sample definition. Among 203 codable open responses, anticipated implementation concerns differed between household and public-space concepts. The study proposes visible agency, a contribution that can shape a shared outcome, as a design proposition for reciprocal participation. Actual use remains to be tested.