The online database stores information about causal relationships, which is extracted from environmental science studies. The type of ‘atomised’ information captured in the database is specifically geared to support assessments of cause and effect. The data describe aspects of a study’s (i) location or environment, (ii) methods and study design, (iii) results, and citation details (iv). Users may search the database for studies that contain evidence for specific causal relationships and then use the information to evaluate the strength of evidence for a cause-effect relationship by using the analyser software.

The online database stores information about causal relationships, which is extracted from environmental science studies. The type of ‘atomised’ information captured in the database is specifically geared to support assessments of cause and effect. The data describe aspects of a study’s (i) location or environment, (ii) methods and study design, and (iii) results. Users may search the database for studies that contain evidence for specific causal relationships and then use the information to evaluate the strength of evidence for a cause-effect relationship by using the analysis software.

The analyser software output provides an analysis that indicates the level of support for any given cause-effect association. The analysis method requires the details from the reviewed literature to be evaluated in a standardized and overt fashion. The software program facilitates the method by guiding the user through the framework and helping to evaluate and weight the evidence according to the quality of the evidence. The software summarizes the evidence by generating a catalogue of evidence and a report.

The threshold values applied in the analysis software provide a similar convenient division of a continuous score, as does the almost ubiquitous convention of 0.05 as a ‘significant’ p-value, but like significance levels, it should not be applied unthinkingly. Also, the analyst collectively considers the conclusions for the individual cause–effect hypotheses to determine the answer to the question posed (overall hypothesis). The final conclusion (based on the evidence) is always a matter of considered judgement that depends on the nature of the original question.