Step 4: Maintain a Causal Diary Farrokh Alemi Ph.D. I am professor Alemi and this lecture discusses how you can create and keep a causal diary. This research was funded by Grant RO1 HL 084767 from the National Heart Blood and Lung Institute.

Step 4: Maintain a Causal Diary Continues from a previous section This lecture continues from a previous section on thought experiments.

Example of a Normal Diary Day Exercise 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 13 14 A diary is a daily record of your success and failure.  A diary could be a simple table in which everyday you record whether you have exercised or not.

Example of a Causal Diary Day Exercise Cause A Constraint on A Cause B Constraint on B … 1 2 3 4 5 6 14 A causal diary is slightly different.  In addition to recording whether you succeeded or failed, you also keep track of the causes or constraints that were present on that day.  The key to a causal diary is to start with a list of causes and failures that is as comprehensive as possible and to indicate on each day which of these causes or constraints were present. 

Track Absence of a Cause as well Day Exercise Cause A Constraint on A Cause B Constraint on B … 1 2 3 4 5 6 14 Enter presence & absence for all categories As before, you have a column where you enter your exercise pattern. In a causal diary you have additional columns where you enter the presence or absence of various causes. It is important to record both the presence as well as the absence of a cause. The information on absence of a cause is just as important in detecting the relationship between the cause and exercise as the information on its presence. In short, data fro the entire row should be entered.

Example Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 14 Exercise Ready to bike to work Rain Sleep early Watch late night show 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 14 Here we see a causal diary set up to track two causes. The first cause we are tracking is whether we were ready to bike to work. Rain is a constraint on this causes. On day one of the diary, we were ready to bike to work and it did not rain. The second cause we are tracking is whether we slept early the night before. A constraint on sleeping early is whether we watched a late night show. The entry on the first day shows that we did watch a late show and we did not sleep early. The next day, the same information is tracked. Data on all causes or constraints whether they are absent or present are entered. The process continues until 2-weeks of data is collected.

Add to the List of Causes and Constraints Add prospectively Add retrospectively Adding a cause at the end of the 2-week diary, right before you want to start the diary for the next two weeks is simple. You add a column to the causal diary and track your data for the next two weeks. Adding a cause or a constraint in the middle of the two week period is more difficult. You would need to go back over the past days and recall if the new cause you were adding was present or absent on the previous days.

Step 5: Analysis of Diaries Lecture Continues Step 5: Analysis of Diaries This lecture continues to the next section titled analysis of diaries.