Causal Map Functions

This is a set of functions for manipulating and simplifying causal maps.

Load example data:

devtools::install_github("stevepowell99/CausalMapFunctions")
library(CausalMapFunctions)
example2

Visualise it:

example2 %>% make_interactive_map

These functions are used in the Causal Map App.

There is more documentation of the functions in our Vignette.

There is extensive documentation of the app in our Guide.

Motivation

There are many existing tools for analysing systems diagrams and also undirected graphs, we identified a need for a tool for analysing the kind of causal maps produced in evaluation research such as programme theories where:

• there may be many causal factors, with long text labels
• the text labels are important because they may be used for searching and filtering
• causal factors may be nested into causal hierarchies
• there may be many co-terminal links between pairs of factors which should sometimes merged and sometimes not
• the main focus is often on a flow of influence from a small set of intervention variables to a small set of focused variables downstream of them, such as key outcomes

Features

• As well as an interactive map, the package wraps DiagrammeR and igraph to produce left-to-right layouts which are particularly suitable for directed maps.
• The package provides many new tools for analysing and aggregating causal maps such as Path robustness, alongside familiar node and graph metrics.
• For hierarchical coding, tools are provided to zoom in and out of individual hierarchies and entire maps.