Innovation Advisory · Framework 06
5 questions · CLEARThe Causal Pathway Review
Five questions to apply when reviewing a Theory of Change or pathway diagram. Use it once the boxes and arrows are on the wall and somebody has to ask whether the logic holds.
Does the pathway clearly show how one step leads to the next? Where does the logic jump?
Read the if-then link between every pair of steps. If you can imagine a reasonable reader saying ‘and then a miracle happens here’, you have found a jump. Name it. Then either fill it with an intermediate step or admit that the leap is an assumption and move it to the assumptions row.
Are activities, outputs, intermediate outcomes and outcomes placed at the right level?
The most common error is presenting an output as an outcome. Trainings delivered is an output. Practice changed is an outcome. If the implementer alone could tick off a row, it is probably an output, the work that produces an outcome.
Have key stakeholders and systems been considered while designing the pathway?
A pathway that depends on a frontline worker, a panchayat, a school principal or a district officer should name them somewhere. If the people and structures the pathway runs through do not appear on the diagram, the pathway is relying on their effort without crediting it, and it has no plan for what happens when they push back.
What assumptions need to be made explicit? Where could the assumptions break down?
Every arrow hides an assumption. Take the three strongest out of the diagram and write each one as a full sentence. Then ask under what conditions it would stop being true. If the answer is ‘it cannot stop being true’, you have not yet found the assumption, so keep looking.
What is repeated in another pathway? Should it be merged, moved or removed?
Organisations running several parallel pathways tend to count the same outcome twice from different angles. If two pathways claim the same change, decide which one owns it, or merge them. A clean pathway claims only what it produces on its own.
What the five questions are doing
Mapped to standard practice for reviewing causal pathways, each of the five letters does a different job. Causal logic checks that the if-then links between steps are plausible. Level clarity catches the common error of confusing outputs with outcomes, or activities with outputs. Essential missing links checks stakeholders and the boundaries of the system, asking whether the pathway has accounted for the people and structures it depends on. Assumptions and risks brings the assumptions to the surface and looks for rival explanations. Repetition and overlap is housekeeping for organisations running several parallel pathways that feed the same outcome.
Use it as a review before signing off a logframe, a Theory of Change or a results chain, whether the work is yours or somebody else's.