What this course is

Participatory systems mapping is a way of building a picture of a complex service system together with the people who live and work in it. The picture is made of factors and the causal links between them. Its purpose is to explore and document how people understand what causes what.

This course teaches two things together. The first is method choice, taken from the UK guidance on participatory systems mapping for population health research, policy and practice. The second is a workshop method you can run on Monday morning: personas walked through a service pathway, emotional touch points recorded, the touch points coded to established determinant frameworks, the map converted into a causal loop diagram, the leverage points read off the diagram, and the whole thing assembled into a logic model.

Who it is for

• Researchers designing an intervention inside a complex service, where the pathway crosses several organisations.
• Service teams and commissioners who need a shared picture of why the current system produces the outcomes it does.
• Public involvement and co-design leads who want the workshop to produce something usable rather than a wall of sticky notes.
• Doctoral and postdoctoral researchers who need a defensible, citable method rather than a facilitator's instinct.

No prior systems training is assumed. The guidance itself is written for readers with no prior knowledge of these methods, and this course follows that assumption.

What you will produce

The method ends in a logic model. Everything before it exists to make that model defensible, so that each row can be traced back to something a person said in the room, or to an established framework.

Those six numbers are the scaffolding of the course. They are explained on the pages that follow, and each is used at a defined point in the method.

The route

Nine steps, in the order they happen in a project. Steps one to five are the workshop. Steps six to nine are the analysis and the writing up.

1. Choose the method and design the projectWork through the Design Framework: the added value of participation, the differences between methods, and feasibility for your purpose.
2. Warm the room upLego Serious Play or an equivalent build task, so that the group is making shared objects before it starts describing a system.
3. Walk the personas through the pathwayName the personas, including staff and unpaid carers, and walk each one from first contact to exit, mapping the steps they actually take.
4. Record the emotional touch pointsEvery point on the journey where a persona feels something carries information about the system. Record what was felt, where, and why.
5. Look for the personas nobody namedThe journeys imply people who are missing from the service and from the room. Add them, then walk them too.
6. Code what you haveCode the touch points and the determinants behind them to the Theoretical Domains Framework, name the mechanism each determinant operates through using the same framework extended, and code the organisational level to CFIR.
7. Convert the map into a causal loop diagramTurn the journey material into variables and causal links, then look for the reinforcing and balancing loops.
8. Find the leverage pointsThe nodes with the most connections do the most work. They are the ones that solve more than one problem at once.
9. Select techniques and assemble the logic modelMap the coded determinants to behaviour change techniques and implementation strategies, then set out inputs, activities, outcomes and impact.

Where this comes from

Two sources sit behind the course, and they do different jobs.

• The guidance. Participatory systems mapping for population health research, policy and practice: Guidance on method choice and design (Blake, Rigby and colleagues, University of Glasgow, published January 2024, funded by the Medical Research Council through the MRC and CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit). It compares six causal systems mapping methods, supplies an editable Design Framework, and provides case studies and appendices.
• The workshop method. The sequence of personas, journeys, emotional touch points, coding, causal loops, leverage points and logic model. It draws on facilitated modelling practice and on the determinant and technique frameworks used across implementation research.

How to use it

Read the foundations first, because the method decisions are made before anyone enters the room. Then work through the method pages in order, and keep the tools page open while you plan.