🔗 Uploading only links

Pages in this section:

All sections:

↙ Section 0: Help with Causal Map

1️⃣ Section 1: Getting started

2️⃣Section 2: Your files

3️⃣ Section 3: Coding

4️⃣ Section 4: Analysis

5️⃣ Section 5: AI

6️⃣ Section 6: Technical reference

Uploading only links

What if you want to import some existing data which is just links? This is sometimes called an “edge list”.

This is basically no different from any other upload. You can append the links to an existing file or overwrite the existing links.

You can import this kind of file too, using the Standard Format Excel upload button.

Your Excel xlsx file should have a single tab called links, containing two columns called from_label and to_label which contain the names of your factors.

Here is an example Excel file and here is another .

If you links don’t really have statements, it is enough to just provide a links tab. However in Causal Map, links are always supposed to have some kind of evidence, so (unless you are uploading into an existing file). If you don’t provide a statements tab, Causal Map will add one with just one dummy statement.

Including other information

That’s the basic setup. But maybe you also want to provide information about what statement, question or source the link is associated with. In which case, these are your options:

Optionally, your links tab can also contain other columns as usual, in particular it can contain the column question_id.

If you include a question_id column, you should include an additional tab called questions containing at least the column question_id and other columns providing information about the questions, e.g. full question text, questionnaire section etc, where relevant.

Optionally, your links tab can also contain a column statement_id.

If you include a statement_id column, you can optionally include, as usual, an additional tab called statements containing at least the column statement_id and a column text containing the text of your statements.

If you optionally include a statements tab, you can optionally also include a source_id column and a corresponding tab called sources with a corresponding source_id column and more columns to provide information like gender, location, or any other information about the source of each statement.

Optionally, your links tab can also contain a column labelled quote, containing the actual quote which underpins each causal claim aka link.

Usually, this quote will be a verbatim section of the text in a corresponding additional tab called statements, see above.

Uploading only links Including other information