One of the most exciting applications of causal mapping is to assess change over time within a system. If we apply a systematic approach to coding (using blindfolded manual coding or AI-supported coding) we can compare the frequencies with which links or factors are mentioned over time. This becomes particularly interesting when applying inductive coding, so that new and emerging phenomena can be included into the codebook. Re-applying new codes to previously coded data would be very tedious with manual coding but is easy to do with AI-supported coding: Transforms Filters -- Soft Recode with Magnetic Labels

More details are given in this paper: (Powell et al., 2025)

Unfortunately, there is not much consensus about what assessing systems change means. Sometimes we read about measuring systems change, which would imply assigning numbers to change, but often just means "assessing".

(Rizzardi, 2025)