[MUSIC] Hi, my name is Claudia Nau with the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Welcome to our practice session for community-based causal mapping. In this section we're going to show you how to design a community-based modeling session. And for each step of the process, we will present practical examples that make the problem more tangible. So the goal of this section is to provide you with practical guidelines and an example on how to design and conduct your own group-based causal mapping session. Before you begin your own group modeling session, let's have a look at a pre-planning checklist. You should have defined your research question, reached out to your stakeholders, obtained IRB clearance, assembled your facilitation team that includes the facilitator and/or a modeler, the wall builder, and the recorder. You should have identified a room for the session and prepared all materials. Please make sure that your room has a white board and a table that is large enough to seat all your stakeholders. Remember, this is very important, all your stakeholders need a clear view of the white board. Please also make sure that you have functioning markers and material for the recorder, which could be either laptop or plenty of paper and pens. You also will have prepared the script that we mentioned in the previous lecture. As a reminder, we are going to use a very straightforward script to elicit variables in this first part of the workshop. And we will follow the initiating and elaborating of causal loop diagrams script from Scriptapedia in the second part. Both scripts are available in the course material. Please be reminded that the two workshop parts that we are presenting have not actually taken place. We designed them using our current knowledge on issues around supplying healthy foods in corner stores. And we have organized them to give you an example that illustrates how to conduct a causal mapping workshop. Our goal is not to build a complete causal loop diagram. But instead, we want to present processes and guidelines that can help you to conduct your own causal mapping workshop. But now let's begin. Let's first look at the setup of the room. It's generally a good idea to do a rehearsal to identify where each member of the core modeling group is going to sit or stand, and to make sure that all material is in place and functioning properly. The facilitator is standing in the front next to the whiteboard. The recorder should sit so that he or she can see and hear everyone at the table. That requires a clear line of sight of all participants and facilitation team members. The wall builder will write the variable names on pieces of paper. And will then tape them to the whiteboard. Therefore, he or she needs to be able to move freely between the table and the whiteboard. Once you have rehearsed your positions, you are ready to welcome your participants. Give them a friendly welcome and tell them you appreciate their coming. This could sound something like this. Good morning. Welcome to our causal mapping session. I would like to thank you very much for your time and for agreeing to come work with us today. The goal of the session, as you already know from the invitation, is to identify the factors that keep healthy options from being profitable in corner stores. Before we get started, let me introduce you to each other. For this session we have Mr. Oliver, Miss Franklin, and Mr. Douglas. Each of you own your own stores. And Mr. Fairmount, who is a business consultant, and over here is Ms. Wakefield, who is a consultant in the marketing field. After you've introduced everyone, begin the modeling session by explaining the goal of your causal mapping session. In our case, the goal is to understand the barriers to the profitability of healthy foods in corner stores. Next, explain the idea of causal maps and the elements a causal map is made of. A short PowerPoint presentation is a great way to do this. Now we begin to build the causal map. So our problem is, why are healthy options not profitable in corner-stores? And for our causal map we defined a problem variable as profit from healthy food options. Ask your stakeholders to think of their own experience with stocking and selling healthy options. Ask them to think of causes why stocking held the options has been profitable or unprofitable for them. Once your stake holders have brought up and discussed an idea, the facilitator needs to prompt and help them to summarize the idea into assistant variable name. The wall builder writes each variable on the piece of paper and puts them on the whiteboard. You may receive suggestions that are very similar, such as, people just don't buy healthy foods and there is slow demand. Well, these two statements sound essentially as if they were the same. And you need to ask your stakeholders which of these two statements they feel describes the issue most accurately. If you're planning to build a large causal loop diagram, it will be helpful to cluster variables by theme. This will facilitate discussing variable meaning and building the causal loop diagram. Once suggestions have slowed down, and before closing this part of the group modelling session, ask the group if there's something else they would like to include. Finally, we discussed the variables on the whiteboard. This is your chance to clarify any remaining questions and to prompt your stakeholders to help you understand the story behind each of the variables. Also, use this opportunity to make sure that all ideas are properly summarized as variable names. At the end, give a brief outlook on the next part of the workshop, where we will be building the actual causal loop diagram. And finally, thank participants and close the meeting. With that, we have come to the end of our first session in which we have given you some guidelines for working with stakeholders to elicit variables for your causal loop diagram. And we're looking forward to building the causal loop diagram with you in our second part. Thank you.