[MUSIC] >> Hi, this is Claudia Nau from the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Welcome to our practice module on community based causal mapping. The objectives for this module are to give you a practical introduction to group based causal mapping, and to provide you with guidelines and tools to design and conduct your own causal mapping workshop. We will begin this module with an introductory lecture, that will lay out the key principals for planning a group modeling session. After we have gotten the lay of the land in the introductory lecture we are going to work through two stylized group modeling sessions that will be presented as animations, to show how to practically lead a group modeling session and solve problems that might occur in the process. In the first animated workshop session, we will elicit variables from stakeholders that we can use for building a causal map. But the most important part is the second animated workshop, where we will use these variables to build a causal map with stakeholders. Causal mapping is a group model building approach where stakeholders build together a causal loop diagram that explains what drives a particular problem. For planning and conducting our group modeling session, we will closely follow Peter Hovmand's approach. You can find references to his work in the course material. But before we get into the detail of planning our session, let's review the goals of building a causal map with stakeholders. You probably remember from previous lectures that building a causal map with stakeholders allows us to reveal the social construction of a problem, integrate stakeholders' different mental maps of a problem into a single visual representation. It allows us to identify the obstacles to implementing a solution. To identify the best leverage points for interventions, and very importantly, stakeholder involved causal mapping allows us to share the ownership of our research and increase the likelihood of adoption and effectiveness of the interventions we are developing. So let's think about the people who are going to take part in our group modeling session. They are of course the stakeholders, and you should have at least three to five stakeholders to get a good group dynamic. A group size of 5 to 12 is ideal, but when your group gets as big or bigger than 20 people, facilitating the group becomes very difficult. If there is more than 20 stakeholders whose input you are looking for, it is a good idea to split stakeholders into separate workshops. These workshops can for example review each other's causal maps. The group modeling session is planned by the core modeling team that is made up of three to five staff members with modeling expertise. And it's important that the core modeling team should also include stakeholders to help you in your planning. And, what is very important, to really share responsibility of the entire research process. The facilitator team for the causal mapping session can overlap with your core modeling team, but it could also be a different group of people. For our variable elicitation and causal mapping workshops, we will need a head facilitator. A wall builder, and a recorder. We'll explain the responsibilities of each of these roles later. We think of a group modeling session as having four stages, and in fact only one of these stages is the actual causal mapping workshop. The other stages are there to prepare and evaluate the causal mapping workshop. You first begin with a problem scoping. In the problem scoping phase we have to identify and define the problem. And to assess if it is suitable for causal mapping. Then we develop a one pager that succinctly describes the project, the purpose, the audience, and the resources needed. This step can take anywhere from one to three hours or several meetings. The time needed for problem scoping depends a lot on how complex your problem is and how familiar you already are with the topic. In any case, you should make sure that you take all the time you need so that you have your problem clearly defined and a very good idea of your project's purpose and its audience. The next phase of the project is the core modeling team planning and capacity building stage. If you find that you want recruit new members to your facilitation team, this is also the time to develop a recruitment and training plan. You should plan for the state several one to two hour meetings. The output from this phase will be an agenda that details how many group modeling sessions you will need and whom you're going to invite. This is also the moment when you should think about applying for IAB approval for your study. A very important step is to develop a detailed outline of the flow of the session and the resources you need. For this we will use so called scripts, that we will discuss in just a moment. The next stage, is the actual group modeling workshop. This seems naturally the most important phase, but I really ask you to not forget, if we haven't prepared the workshop well, it's more than likely that not much will come out of it. Good preparation is really the key for successful group modeling session. The length of the workshop depends a lot on your topic, and your goals. Workshops can vary in length, anywhere from one, or two 90 minute sessions, to several day long sessions. For practice purposes though, I strongly suggest that we begin with just one, or two short sessions. Finally, there is the evaluation and reporting stage of the modeling session. This is the part where you work through and summarize your notes and outputs. And socialize your results with your stakeholders and other academics. Now let's have a closer look at what a script is. Let's look at Peter Hovrnand's Scriptapedia in particular. This is really a fantastic resource and it is free accessible online. And for your information we provide the link to Scriptapedia in the course material. Scriptapedia is a collection of so called scripts that are playbooks that outline the process of a group modeling session step by step. Each script lists the types and roles of staff members that are necessary for a particular group modeling project, the materials we need and a detailed step by step outline of the group modeling process itself. Which is, of course, particularly useful. Finally the script also describes the outputs that we aim to produce in each session. Now let's have a look at what our causal mapping workshop will be about, or in other words, what is the problem that we want our causal map to explain? Let me first give you some background on some of the research I have been doing. Perhaps you already know that many low income neighborhoods do not have grocery stores where residents could buy fresh foods at reasonable prices. Instead, there are many small, privately owned stores, so called corner stores, or convenience stores. And corner stores provide mostly highly processed and calorie dense foods. And food is in general more expensive in these small stores because small store owners can't benefit from purchasing at scale like big grocery stores do. And corner stores operate at very small profit margins. So, we have this dense network of small privately owned stores that sell mostly unhealthy food and we don't have grocery stores selling healthy foods. You may ask, well, why don't the corner stores sell healthy foods and everyone is helped right? And many researchers and public health officials have tried to help store owners to sell healthier products. But so far only with moderate success. So I suggest to look at the problem from a business perspective or the store owner's perspective in fact. In order for storeowners to introduce a healthy product into their store and to keep it on offer, that product needs to be profitable. So the goal of this causal mapping session is to find out what are the barriers to the profitability of healthy foods in corner stores. Because once we have a better understanding of what keeps healthy foods from being profitable, we can develop interventions that address these problems. In other words, the problem that we want to better understand by building a causal map with stakeholders is how can we make sales of healthy foods profitable in corner stores in low income neighborhoods? Now let's work through the two planning phases for our workshop. First, we do the problem scoping. Causal mapping and a systems approach are appropriate for our problem because there are many factors that affect profitability of healthy foods. For example, costs of healthy foods at wholesalers that amount for healthy foods to sales price and people's food budget. And many of these factors are interrelated. If you think for example of how costs, sales price, and demand are interlinked, you see that we will likely have many interrelations and feedbacks between the variables that drive profit. So we have identified and defined a problem, and we have assembled a core modeling team of three staff members who are familiar with systems thinking and causal mapping. And a cornerstore owner was willing to join our team to plan the modeling session. We also have completed all preliminary tasks. We assured IRB clearance, reserved a room, and organized our material. We also identified the stakeholders we want to invite, and have extended our invitations. And we have outlined our workshops using Hovmand's Scriptapedia. Let's have a closer look at the scripts that we will follow to conduct our workshop sessions. The first script is a simplified version of the variable elicitation script that is available in Scriptapedia. As the name says, the goal of the script is to elicit variables. In our case, for building the causal map. And, really the main reason why we are using a simplified version is because the key focus of this module is on causal mapping, but we wanted to give you an idea about variable elicitation. So I encourage you to follow the details script if you prefer or any other script such as the graphs over time square. That is also available in Scriptapedia to elicit variables in your own session. Both the adapted and original scripts are available in the course material. We will plan for 45 minutes for the variable elicitation session, and 15 minutes for debriefing. The second script is called, initiating and elaborating a causal loop diagram. And we will follow the script closely. We will plan on a 90 minute session for the second workshop. Next, we will lead you through the stylized stakeholder workshops to elicit variables and build the causal map. So this concludes the introductory lecture. I'm looking forward to working with you through the stylized stakeholder workshops to elicit variables and build the causal map.
