At this point, you may be wondering where the [causal diagram] comes from. It’s an excellent question. It may be the question. A [CD] is supposed to be a theoretical representation of the state-of-the-art knowledge about the phenomena you’re studying. It’s what an expert would say is the thing itself, and that expertise comes from a variety of sources. Examples include economic theory, other scientific models, conversations with experts, your own observations and experiences, literature reviews, as well as your own intuition and hypotheses.
Scott Cunningham, Causal Inference: The Mixtape (2021)
Our goal in this book is always to measure the impact of one variable on another, which we can represent as a “starter” CD (Figure 4-1).
Figure 4-1. The simplest possible CD
Once you have drawn that relationship, what comes next? How can you know what other variables you should include or not? Many authors say you should rely on expert knowledge, which is fine if you work in an established field like economics or epidemiology. But my perspective in this book is that you’re likely “behavioral scientist number one” in your organization and therefore you need to be able to start from a blank slate.
In this chapter, I’ll outline a recipe to get you from the basic CD in Figure 4-1 to a workable CD. As we go through the process, please keep in ...
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