After your initial causal mapping, you will usually end up with multiple causal claims for a given single link or path from X to Y. At Causal Map, we call the individual links just "links" and we call the collection of multiple "co-terminal" links, i.e. the set of links starting at X and finishing at Y, a "bundle of links" or a "links bundle" or just a "bundle". In the special case where there is only one link in the bundle, then the link = the bundle.

Three causal claims making up a bundle

Normally, not one of these possibly hundreds or thousands of causal claims, grouped into many bundles, is incontrovertible. Sometimes we call each of these claims "evidence" but only in a weak sense of "something we could take into consideration when weighing up the validity of the claim that X causally influenced Y". Usually they — singly or as part of bundles — have not yet passed any test at this stage or been compared to any standard.

So how can we submit our links and bundles of links to this kind of assessment?

(2026)

Aston (2019). Note "Strength" means "Strength of evidence".