Space-time Budget Research Articles

A step in time: A sequence analysis and choice modelling approach to examine time allocation in individual activities and the role of neighbourhood crime

The Space-Time Budget (STB) method is used to collect spatial and temporal features of an individual’s activities and is an important technique to explore relationships between the environment and crime. This spatial and temporal approach to the study of everyday activity spaces reveals much about victimisation experiences, the relationship between place, time, and perceptions of safety, and where and when offending may occur. Few studies, however, consider the relationship between living in a criminogenic place (neighbourhood crime) and people’s daily activity patterns. Drawing on disaggregate app-based data for 50 participants tracked over a 7-day period, we use sequence analysis to first delineate time allocation to each activity on a minute-by-minute basis. Next, using result from the sequence analysis we introduce the multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model to understand how neighbourhood crime and socio-demographic characteristics influence individuals’ time allocation to discrete daily activities. Results reveal that neighbourhood drug and violent incidents exert restrictions on an individual’s propensity to spend time outside the home. Females and older people appear more likely to be constrained by the presence of neighbourhood crime (in particular drug and property incidents) as they allocate less time to outdoor activities. The principal utility of the current study is its methodological advancement and the practical insights for urban planning regarding the design of crime prevention strategies to increase guardianship in public places.

Prioritise Propensity: A multimethod analysis of peer influence and school-based aggression

ABSTRACT This study examines the situational role of aggressive peers in the explanation of school-based aggression. Using data from the multimethod Peer Relations and Social Behavior (PEERS) study, it tests hypotheses derived from Situational Action Theory (SAT) to investigate whether the effect of aggressive peers is greater for high propensity adolescents. The PEERS study used a cross-sectional survey followed by adapted Space-Time Budget (STB) interviews with a randomly selected subsample of participants. This paper presents situational analyses of STB data alongside additive analyses of survey data to demonstrate both situational convergence and statistical dependence. Results showed that the effect of aggressive peers was greatest amongst adolescents with high aggression-relevant propensity (i.e. weak morality and a poor ability to exercise self-control). Whilst high propensity adolescents were situationally vulnerable to the influence of aggressive peers, low propensity adolescents were situationally resistant to criminogenic peer effects. These findings suggest that targeting aggression-relevant propensity may be more fundamental than reducing exposure to aggressive peers for preventing aggressive behavior in schools. The theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions in this study can be applied to advance future research on peer influence, aggression, and SAT.

From structural time use to situational rule-breaking: Analysing adolescents’ time use and the person-setting interaction

While unsupervised and unstructured socialising with peers is associated with delinquency, less is known about to what extent it fits within adolescents’ daily routine activities; that is, their general, structural time use. Furthermore, research informed by the situational action theory shows that unstructured socialising increases the probability of rule-breaking acts more for individuals with higher crime propensity. Hence, structural time use might explain patterns of unstructured socialising, and crime propensity might explain why some are at an increased risk of committing rule-breaking acts during such situations. The present study aims to connect these three aspects and examine: (i) how adolescents tend to structure their time use, (ii) if their structural time use differentially places them in unstructured socialising, and (iii) whether some adolescents during unstructured socialising run an elevated risk of committing rule-breaking acts due to their morality (as part of their crime propensity) while also taking their structural time use into account. Using a sample of 512 adolescents (age 16) in Sweden, time use and morality are analysed using latent class analysis based on space-time budget data and a self-report questionnaire. Multilevel linear probability models are utilised to examine how rule-breaking acts result from an interaction between an individual’s morality and unstructured socialising, also taking structural time use into account. Results show that the likelihood of unstructured socialising in private but not in public is different across identified latent classes. Adolescents, in general, run an elevated risk of rule-breaking acts during unstructured socialising, irrespective of structural time use. In this study, these acts consist mainly of alcohol consumption. However, the risk is higher for adolescents with lower morality. Adolescents’ time use may account for a general pattern of delinquency, but accounting for rule-breaking acts requires knowledge of the interaction between person and setting.

The situational conditions of suicide in transit environments: An analysis using CCTV footage

IntroductionWe explore the use of CCTV footage to map suicidal self-injurious behavior on a subway platform to better understand the settings and the situational conditions of individuals just before they attempt suicide. MethodsWe use footage from CCTV cameras for gaining new insight into the situational conditions that relate to suicidal self-directed violence in the transit system in Stockholm, Sweden. We adopt a space-time budget template to record, step-by-step, what happens over time as individuals on the platform wait for an incoming train. The analysis applies visualization tools (VISUAL-TimePAcTS) and uses a cross-over design to identify risk factors associated with suicide. ResultsFindings show that suicide risk varies both temporally and spatially. Among all types of possible behaviors and places, being close to the edge of the platform of the opposite direction of the train and crossing the security line – this behavior and place combined – are associated with increased risk of suicide. ConclusionsWe confirm that using CCTV footage as data source provides valuable insight into relevant situational conditions in which suicides take place, which can be useful to inform prevention strategies, particularly information about behavior and place combined. The article concludes by reflecting upon the importance of these results for future research.

Does truancy make the delinquent? A situational and longitudinal analysis of the truancy–delinquency relationship

Although truancy has frequently been linked to delinquency, we still lack a proper understanding of how this relationship comes about. This study uses Situational Action Theory (SAT) to develop a more comprehensive, mechanism-based explanation of the truancy–delinquency nexus. The core argument is that the relationship is conditional on adolescents’ propensity for delinquency and their exposure to criminogenic settings. To test this argument, I use two kinds of data collected as part of the Peterborough Adolescent Development Study (PADS+). Drawing on unique situational data provided by space–time budgets, I find only weak evidence that the relationship between truancy and delinquency exists at the situational level. Analyses of multiple yearly waves of this panel study provide support for SAT’s potential as a theoretical framework for the truancy–delinquency relationship by showing that the effect of truancy on changes in delinquency is conditional on changes in adolescents’ delinquency propensity and their exposure to criminogenic settings.

Space–time budget allocation policy design for viral marketing

We address formally the problem of opinion dynamics when the agents of a social network (e.g., consumers) are not only influenced by their neighbors but also by an external influential entity referred to as a marketer. The influential entity tries to sway the overall opinion as close as possible to a desired opinion by using a specific influence budget. We assume that the exogenous influences of the entity happen during discrete-time advertising campaigns; consequently, the overall closed-loop opinion dynamics becomes a linear-impulsive (hybrid) one. The main technical issue addressed is finding how the marketer should allocate its budget over time (through marketing campaigns) and over space (among the agents) such that the agents’ opinion be as close as possible to the desired opinion. Our main results show that the marketer has to prioritize certain agents over others based on their initial condition, their influence power in the social graph and the size of the cluster they belong to. The corresponding space–time allocation problem is formulated and solved for several special cases of practical interest. Valuable insights can be extracted from our analysis. For instance, for most cases, we prove that the marketer has an interest in investing most of its budget at the beginning of the process and that budget should be shared among agents according to the famous water-filling allocation rule. Numerical examples illustrate the analysis.

Why Monitoring Doesn’t Always Matter: The Interaction of Personal Propensity with Physical and Psychological Parental Presence in a Situational Explanation of Adolescent Offending

ABSTRACT Parental monitoring is often shown to have a negative relationship with crime involvement. However, research often ignores both the mechanism by which these relationships occur and the conditions under which they might (and might not) be found. Building on the interactional hypotheses of Situational Action Theory (SAT) and the parental monitoring definitions provided by a new model of Goal-Directed Parental Action (GDPA), this paper assesses evidence of the role of the presence or absence of guardians, adolescent-perceived parental knowledge and personal crime propensity in explaining why a crime does or doesn’t occur in a particular situation. To test these new hypotheses, this paper uses specialist data (including innovative Space-Time Budget data) from the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+) and employs multiple methods to assess both statistical interaction (dependence) and situational interaction (convergence). Findings provide evidence for interaction between key personal characteristics (specifically, generalized law relevant morality and ability to exercise self control) and features of environments (in this study, aspects of parental monitoring) in the perception-choice process that is proposed by SAT to explain action, including acts of crime. They suggest that despite high correlations with crime in the literature, monitoring doesn’t always matter because many crime averse young people do not offend anyway. Furthermore, in an entirely new finding, generalized perceived parental knowledge of the circumstances of activity (psychological presence) results in a lower rate of crime among crime prone adolescents when they are unsupervised.

Assessment of Personal Occupational Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields in Libraries and Media Libraries, Using Calibrated On-Body Exposimeters

Background and Objectives: With the spread of Wifi networks, safety concerns have arisen, with complaints of somatic disorders, notably in traditional libraries and media libraries. The aim of the present study was to describe the conditions and levels of exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields in the real-life occupational conditions of those working in traditional libraries and media libraries. Methods: Dynamic measurements, using an exposimeter, were taken in 20 radiofrequency bands from 88 to 5850 MHz. The activity of 28 library workers was analyzed on a space-time budget. An audit of exposure sources and static measurements enabled the work-places to be mapped. Results: In seven libraries, 78,858 samples were taken over the 20 radiofrequency bands from 88 to 5850 MHz. Exposure was described for 28 working days. The median total field was 0.071 V/m (10th percentile: 0.022 V/m, 90th percentile: 0.534 V/m) and for Wifi the median field was 0.005 V/m (10th percentile: 0.005 V/m, 90th percentile: 0.028 V/m). Median individual exposure to Wifi frequency waves ranged from 0.005 to 0.040 V/m. Conclusions: Overall, the occupational exposure in this sector was close to the exposure in the general population. Peaks were due to the use of walkie-talkies by security staff. Exposure due to external sources depended on geographic location. Exposure in this occupation is well below the general occupational exposure levels, notably as regards Wifi.

Young people's differential vulnerability to criminogenic exposure: Bridging the gap between people- and place-oriented approaches in the study of crime causation.

The overall purpose of this study is to contribute to bridging the gap between people- and place-oriented approaches in the study of crime causation. To achieve this we will explore some core hypotheses derived from Situational Action Theory about what makes young people crime prone and makes places criminogenic, and about the interaction between crime propensity and criminogenic exposure predicting crime events. We will also calculate the expected reduction in aggregate levels of crime that will occur as a result of successful interventions targeting crime propensity and criminogenic exposure. To test the hypotheses we will utilize a unique set of space–time budget, small area community survey, land-use and interviewer-led questionnaire data from the prospective longitudinal Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+) and an artificial neural network approach to modelling. The results show that people’s crime propensity (based on their personal morals and abilities to exercise self-control) has the bulk of predictive power, but also that including criminogenic exposure (being unsupervised with peers and engaged in unstructured activities in residential areas of poor collective efficacy or commercial centres) demonstrates a substantial increase in predictive power (in addition to crime propensity). Moreover, the results show that the probability of crime is strongest when a crime-prone person is in a criminogenic setting and, crucially, that the higher a person’s crime propensity the more vulnerable he or she is to influences of criminogenic exposure. Finally, the findings suggest that a reduction in people’s crime propensity has a much bigger impact on their crime involvement than a reduction in their exposure to criminogenic settings.

Space-time budget allocation for marketing over social networks

We address formally the problem of opinion dynamics when the agents of a social network (e.g., consumers) are not only influenced by their neighbors but also by an external influential entity referred to as a marketer. The influential entity tries to sway the overall opinion to its own side by using a specific influence budget during discrete-time advertising campaigns; consequently, the overall closed-loop dynamics becomes a linear-impulsive (hybrid) one. The main technical issue addressed is finding how the marketer should allocate its budget over time (through marketing campaigns) and over space (among the agents) such that the agents’ opinion be as close as possible to a desired opinion; for instance, the marketer may prioritize certain agents over others based on their influence in the social graph. The corresponding space-time allocation problem is formulated and solved for several special cases of practical interest. Valuable insights can be extracted from our analysis. For instance, for most cases we prove that the marketer has an interest in investing most of its budget at the beginning of the process and that budget should be shared among agents according to the famous water-filling allocation rule. Numerical examples illustrate the analysis.

Environmental Exposure of the Adult French Population to Permethrin.

This work aims to assess the exposure to permethrin of the adult French population from available contamination measurements of outdoor air, indoor air, and settled dust. Priority is given to the assessment of chronic exposure, given the potential of permethrin to induce cancers and/or endocrine disorders. A statistical method was devised to calculate exposure to permethrin by different pathways (inhalation, indirect dust ingestion, and dermal contact). This method considers anthropometric parameters, the population's space-time budget, and recent methods for calculating dermal exposure. Considering the media of interest, our results pointed to house dust as the main environmental source of permethrin exposure, followed by indoor and outdoor air. Dermal contact and indirect dust ingestion may be more important exposure pathways than inhalation. A sensitivity analysis indicated that exposure estimates were mainly affected by variability within contamination data. This study is the first step in aggregated exposure and risk assessment due to pyrethroid exposure. Outdoor air, indoor air, and settled dust may constitute significant exposure sources, in addition to diet, which could be important. The next step entails assessing internal doses and estimating the proportion of each exposure source and pathway relative to internal exposure.

Situational Peer effects on Adolescents’ Alcohol Consumption: The Moderating Role of Supervision, Activity Structure, and Personal Moral Rules

ABSTRACTUsing five waves of unique space-time budget data, this study investigates the relevance of peer presence and behavior on adolescents’ alcohol consumption at a situational level, addressing to which degree these situational peer effects are moderated by the setting and by individual differences. Multilevel models, predicting the probability of alcohol consumption in a given hour, show that peers’ alcohol misuse is most relevant during unstructured activities while unsupervised. However, individuals differ in their susceptibility to these situational processes, with adolescents holding strong moral convictions against alcohol consumption being basically immune to situational peer effects, even during unstructured and unsupervised activities.

WHY IS INVOLVEMENT IN UNSTRUCTURED SOCIALIZING RELATED TO ADOLESCENT DELINQUENCY?*

The relationship between unstructured socializing (peer‐oriented activity without supervision) and adolescent delinquency is widely established and recognized, but less is known about why this relationship exists. The present study integrates the unstructured socializing perspective with insights from social learning theory and other theoretical perspectives on peer influence and empirically investigates four possible explanatory processes. The study applies time diary data to operationalize accurately the concept of unstructured socializing and survey data to capture mediating variables and self‐reported delinquency (a general frequency measure of various offenses, as well as specified measures for violence, theft, and vandalism). Data were collected longitudinally with two waves of surveys and space–time budget interviews among 610 adolescents (11 to 20 years of age). A multilevel‐path model was estimated to analyze within‐individual changes over time. The findings indicate that three of the four proposed explanatory processes contribute to the explanation of the relationship between unstructured socializing and delinquency.

Voluntary Health Registry of French Nationals after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident: Methods, Results, Implications, and Feedback.

Introduction The 11th of March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck alongside the north-east coast of Honshu Island, Japan, causing a tsunami and a major nuclear accident. The French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS) set up, within one week after the triple catastrophe, an Internet-based registry for French nationals who were in Japan at the time of the disasters. In this string of disasters, in this context of uncertainties about the nuclear risks, the aim of this registry was to facilitate the: (1) realization of further epidemiologic studies, if needed; and (2) contact of people if a medical follow-up was needed. The purpose of this report was to describe how the health registry was set up, what it was used for, and to discuss further utilization and improvements to health registries after disasters. The conception of the questionnaire to register French nationals was based on a form developed as part of the Steering Committee for the management of the post-accident phase in the event of nuclear accident or a radiological emergency situation (CODIRPA) work. The questionnaire was available online. The main objective was achieved since it was theoretically possible to contact again the 1,089 persons who completed the form. According to the data collected on their space-time budget, to the result of internal contamination measured by the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and dosimetric expertise published by the World Health Organization (WHO), it was not suitable to conduct an epidemiologic follow-up of adverse effects of exposure to ionizing radiations among them. However, this registry was used to launch a qualitative study on exposure to stress and psychosocial impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake on French nationals who were in Japan in March 2011. Setting a registry after a disaster is a very important step in managing the various consequences of a disaster. This experience showed that it is quickly feasible and does not raise adverse side effects in involved people. Motreff Y , Pirard P , Lagrée C , Roudier C , Empereur-Bissonnet P . Voluntary health registry of French nationals after the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident: methods, results, implications, and feedback. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2016;31(3):326-329.

Mobility Disadvantage and Livelihood Opportunities of Marginalized Widowed Women in Rural Uganda

The adverse effect of mobility restrictions on the livelihood of economically marginalized women in rural Africa is considerable. This study investigates the space–time paths of twenty-seven widowed women in rural Uganda through methodological pluralism that integrates multiple sources of quantitative and qualitative data collected from Global Positioning System tracking, in-depth interviews, and participant observation. Geographic information systems mapping of activity space suggests that mobility patterns are characterized by frequent short repetitive trips and less flexible space–time budgets. In turn, this reduces opportunities to pursue diversified sources of income that enhance livelihood. Statistical regressions and qualitative interviews also show, however, that access to use of motorized vehicles such as cars and motorcycle taxis significantly strengthens livelihood by reducing time poverty, rendering time as a resource for pursuing income opportunities.

The space-time budget method in criminological research

This article reviews the Space-Time Budget method developed by Wikström and colleagues and particularly discusses its relevance for criminological research. The Space-Time Budget method is a data collection instrument aimed at recording, retrospectively, on an hour-by-hour basis, the whereabouts and activities of respondents during four days in the week before the interview. The method includes items about criminologically relevant events, such as offending and victimization. We demonstrate that the method can be very useful in criminology, because it enables the study of situational causes of crime and victimization, because it enables detailed measurement of theoretical concepts such as individual lifestyles and individual routine activities, and because it enables the study of adolescents’ whereabouts, which extends the traditional focus on residential neighborhoods. The present article provides the historical background of the method, explains how the method can be applied, presents validation results based on data from 843 secondary school students in the Netherlands and describes the methods’ strengths and weaknesses. Two case studies are summarized to illustrate the usefulness of the method in criminological research. The article concludes with some anticipated future developments and recommendations on further readings.

Testing the Situational Explanation of Victimization among Adolescents

Objectives: This study aimed to test situational theories of victimization by answering three research questions, namely to what extent victims are actually victimized while being exposed to risky situations, whether the relation between victimization and situational elements is causal, and which elements of a situation are risky. We distinguished the type of activity, the company that individuals keep, the place of the activity, and the time of the activity. Methods: Data were collected among adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands, using space–time budgets. These provided detailed information on situational elements for each hour across a period of four days. Multivariate fixed effects logit analyses were used to ensure that the results were not due to stable differences between individuals. Results: A total of 55 individuals reported 63 incidents of victimization. Results confirmed most hypotheses. Especially, the relation between delinquency and victimization was extraordinarily strong. Alcohol consumption, presence of peers, absence of authority figures, and being in a public place also increased the risk of victimization. Conclusions: Confirming major victimization theories, victimization was shown to occur during and because of exposure to risky situations. The hypothesized elements of risky situations were shown to have independent effects on victimization.

Situational conditions and adolescent offending: Does the impact of unstructured socializing depend on its location?

This study aims to identify the locations where unstructured socializing is related to adolescent offending. ‘Locations’ refer to private, semi-public and public spaces, which are further categorized into public entertainment, public transportation, other semi-public settings, streets, shopping centres and open spaces. Detailed longitudinal data, derived from space–time budget interviews among 615 respondents in the age range 11–20 years, about hourly activities and the whereabouts of adolescents are analysed. A random intercept panel model is used to control for selection effects that occur when crime-prone individuals prefer crime-conducive locations to other locations. Findings indicate that unstructured socializing is positively related to offending and that this relationship strongly depends on the location in which it occurs.

SITUATIONAL CAUSES OF OFFENDING: A FIXED‐EFFECTS ANALYSIS OF SPACE–TIME BUDGET DATA

Situational theories of crime assert that the situations that people participate in contain the proximal causes of crime. Prior research has not tested situational hypotheses rigorously, either for lack of detailed situational data or for lack of analytical rigor. The present research combines detailed situational data with analytical methods that eliminate all stable between‐individual factors as potential confounds. We test seven potential situational causes: 1) presence of peers, 2) absence of adult handlers, 3) public space, 4) unstructured activities, 5) use of alcohol, 6) use of cannabis, and 7) carrying weapons. In a two‐wave panel study, a general sample of adolescents completed a space–time budget interview that recorded, hour by hour over the course of 4 complete days, the activities and whereabouts of the subjects, including any self‐reported offenses. In total, 76 individuals reported having committed 104 offenses during the 4 days covered in the space–time budget interview. Using data on the 4,949 hours that these 76 offenders spent awake during these 4 days, within‐individual, fixed‐effects multivariate logit analyses were used to establish situational causes of offending. The findings demonstrate that offending is strongly and positively related to all hypothesized situational causes except using cannabis and carrying weapons.

Adolescent delinquency and diversity in behavior settings

Purpose: This study aimed to test whether adolescents’ delinquency is related to the geographic, functional and social diversity of the behavior settings that they are exposed to. Methods: Data were collected in a two-wave panel study amongst 616 adolescents. In the first wave, diversity was measured using a space-time budget interview recording their activities from hour to hour during four days. Self-control, morality, peer deviance, unsupervised peer activity, and parental supervision were measured using a self-report questionnaire. Delinquency was measured using self-report questions in the second wave. Results: The findings demonstrated that setting diversity is positively related to delinquency. For geographic and functional setting diversity, a substantial part of the positive association is independent of gender, age and the other explanatory variables. Conclusions: Adolescents’ delinquency is not only affected by the overall contents of the settings that they encounter, but also by how much the content of settings varies over the course of the day.