PDF ⛶
🌻 Create Links tab#

Qualitative causal mapping involves taking passages of text, e.g. from interviews or documents, and identifying sections which make causal claims. We highlight each of these sections and specify a causal factor at each end of each link (for example Lost job or Went hungry). This means creating a new factor or reusing an existing one. Usually we create these factors inductively as we code, and revise and review and consolidate them as part of the process, as with any other kind of qualitative content analysis.

To code a causal link,

Source Text Viewer#

✨ What you can do here: Read your source documents and create causal links by highlighting text. When you highlight a passage that claims or implies that one thing influences or causes another, a popup lets you identify the cause and effect. This is where you do the core work of mapping out causal relationships from your source material, a process which we call *coding*

The text viewer shows full text from one source at a time. The Source text header contains source ID, source info toggle, source Prev/Next, highlight navigation, and Help. When you select several sources, it initially shows the first in the selection; with two or more selected, a pen-to-square icon on a pill in the Sources dropdown marks which source is on screen. You can:

Full text search (selected sources)#

Below the Sources bar, Full text search… opens a small panel. Type at least three characters to search source text in the current scope (same rule as the Sources dropdown: no selection = all sources in project order; more than one source selected = only those; exactly one selected still searches all project sources for this tool—only the strict multi-select narrows the list). Matches are highlighted in the viewer in a separate colour from causal link highlights; they do not change the links table or filters.

Use First / Previous / Next / Last to jump between hits. The counter shows hits and how many sources actually contain a match (out of how many are in scope). When the next hit is in another source, the viewer loads that source without changing what is selected in the Sources dropdown (so empty = all stays empty). × clears the query and closes the panel; clicking Full text search… again while the panel is open does the same.

Inside the header, there is an info ℹ️ icon which toggles open/shut a panel beneath it which shows the values of the custom columns for the current source e.g. gender etc.

Navigate sources (buttons in the Source text header):

Navigate highlights within the current source:

Source selection is controlled by the Sources dropdown. When several sources are selected, the viewer starts on the first; with two or more selected, a pen-to-square icon on a pill shows which source is open (hidden when only one source is selected).

Dealing with long documents in the source text viewer#

For documents longer than ~30-40 pages, the text viewer automatically splits content into manageable chunks for better performance.

Visual Highlighting#

Each section of coded text, each causal claim, is shown with a highlight.

For overlapping or identical highlights with multiple links, overlaps are shown with varying color opacity. Clicking on multiple highlights shows a link selector for each section.

Link Editor screen#

Opens when you highlight text or click on existing links.

Fields:

Actions:

Update behavior:

Links in Causal Map only have one cause and one effect. You can add multiple causes and/or effects to the boxes, and the system createsall combinations when saving. So if you put unemployment and violence in the Cause box, and stress and worry in the Effect box, the system will create four links.

About the factor label dropdown menus#

By creating links, you also create the names of your factors.

In Causal Map, a factorisits label. Once you create a label, there is nothing else to add.

Factor names which contain semicolons ; get special treatment as they separate the different parts of 🔖 Hierarchical factors .

After beginning to create links between factors, already-coded factors will appear in the dropdown menus in the to and from factor boxes. For added convenience. The most frequently coded factors will appear at the top of this list

Link tags are available as a special kind of memo when coding a link: you can use them to provide any kind of additional information.

There is no need to actually use a hash # at the start of a link tag, though you can if you want. Just use any unique single word which is easy to search and filter on, like #nutrition or nutrition# or nutrition–.

As usual in Causal Map, you can apply one or more tags, and you can either select existing tags or create new ones on the fly.

Later, you can filter the map (see ✨ Transforms Filters: Include or exclude tags) to show only links containing or beginning or ending with specific hashtags (or parts of hashtags), and also for links which donotcontain specific hashtags or parts of hashtags.

You can also use tags to narrow down your searches in 🔗 The Manage Links tab.

You can display tags on your map.

Conceptually, there are two kinds of tag.

You can use any tag which does not begin with a ? to record any other information about the link, e.g.:

Weak tags#

Weak tags are a special kind of tag. They arecaveats. If you use weak tags, you should make sure that by default your maps do not include any link with a weak tag.

This is just a convention, it makes no difference to the Causal Map app.

They begin with ? and are used to mark any link which you are not sure is always valid across the global context for the whole global map, for example: