Reference no: EM133769170

Purpose
Since you have spent time on defining the characteristics of your problem, the next step is developing the causes or history of the problem. The causal analysis helps you and the reader to understand how historical aspects caused the current problem, how the aspects explain why the problem exists now, and to help you establish the foundation for solutions or advocacy later in the writing process. This means you will need to conduct a causal analysis in which you directly examine the history of a problem to establish or trace the effects of the aspects leading to the current issue. Think of yourself as a historian who analyzes an event to help establish how the event created a ripple that has specific bearings on your current problem.

In analyzing the causal influences of history on your problem, you will be in some ways producing a new point of view on current understandings of historical moments. You will need to focus on explaining and analyzing information to help you substantiate, reconcile, and synthesize a new understanding of the historical aspects. Causal analysis means reviewing and interpreting sources to address different perspectives. To this end, you will need both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources help to establish the historical aspects as they occurred while the secondary sources expand and develop a fuller view of aspects.

Assignment
Write a causal chain analysis that is seven to ten pages for your problem (not including the Works Cited page), as you defined it in the proposal. You need to explain the causes of your problem as it relates to the current problem. As you move forward to analyzing, make sure you establish clear links between the causes and your problem. It is important that you analyze how and why the causal circumstances directly support the current issue. For this rhetorical situation, you will need to pull both primary and secondary sources to help you generate a strong causal synthesis for your problem. This means your view of a historical event might vary vastly from current public opinion or vary from the secondary sources you uncover. This is fine as your job will be to discuss the previous understanding of the event or events to help you generate your own causal link.

Causation
To establish causes, you need to address why your problem exists. Think about answering what contributed to the development of your problem?

As it stands, you have created a list of characteristics to help define the current situation of your problem in the proposal. These are not causes! For example, if your problem is the high cost of attending college, a characteristic of attending college might be the growth of the cost of books or supplies over twenty years. A cause, on the other hand, might be the role of publication companies who support a consistent string of new editions or the beginning of department policies such as the newest textbook edition must be used. The focus is on why the problem exists. What created the problem?

Organization and Development
The causal analysis has two main points: first, presenting the facts of your causal events, and second, explaining how the causal events link or contribute to your current problem (effect).
Use your knowledge of causal analysis to explain how those causal events serve as causes to the current situation that you are analyzing, or, in other words, how they led up to and have created your problem.
Examine your sources and pull different historical events, movements, ideas, social attitudes, people, and structural and economical contributors that explain the creation of your problem.
Organizational Options
Organizational Option 1 (point-to-point method):
Cause and analyze for effect (cause two)
Cause 2 and analyze for effect (cause three)
Repeat as needed to include a complete chain.
Organizational Option 2 (focus on the causes and then split to the analytical section):
Section 1:
Cause 1
Cause 2
Cause 3
Repeat as needed.
Section 2:
Analyze how your causes work together to produce the proposal problem.
Repeat to create the chain.
Note: this section should be focused on showing the connection to the proposal (please avoid merely stating these causes create your proposal problem). You need to show the connections. Further, the analytical section should be longer than the causes section because this is where you are analyzing and explaining how the causes work together to create the effect.