✨ Transforms Filters: Focus or exclude factors

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In Causal Map 3, you can focus on just one or more specific factors within your map to understand the direct and indirect influences leading to it/them and all outcomes that result from it/them. In other words, unpack the role of the factor as both an outcome and an influence within the broader system.

Click on the Transforms Filters panel and select the 'Focus' filter.

Define the factor you want to focus on: you can focus on one or more factors

Set the steps: Choose the number of steps (or links) to include in your map. As with Transforms Filters: Tracing paths, you can specify how many steps down (or up) you want to show beyond the factor(s) you focus on.

Increasing this number will broaden the results by including longer paths. But keep in mind that, when you’re analysing interviews, people usually don’t report causal chains longer than 4 steps.

The factors which match the filter are shown with a thicker light-blue border.

🗺 Simplify your map: Consider applying other filters beforehand to format and simplify your map before tracing paths.

⛓Tracing threads: As with the Tracing paths filter, you can switch the toggle to trace only complete stories told by individual sources. See Transforms Filters: Tracing paths for more information.

🖇️Match anywhere: Switch the Match anywhere toggle off to only match the exact factor(s) you type, or switch it on to match any part of what you type.

📑 Order: As always, the order of your filters matters. In the illustration we have dragged the Focus filter to the top. That’s why Increased Knowledge is outlined in blue, because there are some factors like Increased Knowledge; farming and further down in this panel is the Zoom filter which collapses those factors inside Increased Knowledge.

As an alternative you can use the collapse filter to collapse multiple factors of interest into one, leaving the neighbours untouched.