This blog post is part of a series investigating different demographics and uses of mySociety services. You can read more about this series here. 

Just as there is interesting information to gain from where people make reports, there are also interesting things to discover from when an issue was reported. 

There are four interesting times in the life of a FixMyStreet report:

1. When a problem happened
2. When a problem was noticed
3. When it was reported
4. When it was fixed

In the FixMyStreet dataset we have lots of information for when a problem is reported, but less about the other times. A follow-up survey gives us some idea if a problem was fixed inside a month –but this isn’t universally responded to. 

Reka Solymosi, Kate Bowers and Taku Fujiyama (2018) examined FixMyStreet data and found some signs that enough reports are made close enough to the time of time a problem is noticed that they show a statistical difference. Using reports of broken streetlights (which should be more noticeable when it’s dark), they showed that more reports were made at night compared to other kinds of reports. 

This analysis is replicated on the Explorer minisite, which shows that more problems with street lights are reported during the winter months; and also that they are disproportionately likely to be reported during darker times of day than other reports as a broken streetlight is more noticeable at night (while other kinds of problems become less obvious). The below graph shows when street light problems were reported. While a fair number of reports are made during daylight (reflecting that not all issues are reported close to when they were observed, or that some street light problems are noticeable during the day), compared to the dataset as a whole the nighttime reports for this category stand out.

Potholes are reported at the start of the year, and disproportionately in the afternoon. Dog fouling is also reported more at the start of the year, but this is more of an early morning report, with a peak as people arrive at work towards 9:00 am:

Some patterns reflect how people’s activity changes when not working. Issues in parks and open spaces are reported more at the weekend, while potholes are reported more during the week. 

While some problems are driven by physical processes that raises their occurrence at certain times of year and their report at certain times of day, other reports result from the activity of other people. Rubbish is reported in the morning, but also has peaks on Sunday (following Saturday night) and Monday, as regular commuters return. 

Similar to the idea that more 311 reports are made in spaces that are contested between different communities, Solymosi and colleagues suggest that reports can also be driven by the handover of the same space between different groups: “The narrative descriptions included with [FixMyStreet] reports reveal that these reports are made by people who are waking up to go to work, and encountering signs of activity that took place in the same location, but at a different time. They see signs of another activity in the space their routine activity pattern takes them through but is incongruent with their current use of this space, and interpret these as a signal disorder, attributing meaning which can result in heightened fear or anxiety.”

For people writing to their representatives on WriteToThem, there are similarly differences in when people write to different kinds of representatives. These might be times people are exposed to something that makes them want to write to their representative, or when they have the time to write.  Compared to all messages sent through WriteToThem, people writing to MPs are more likely to be writing before work and in the late afternoon, while Councillors are sent more messages  between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm. 

While few people write during the night, compared to other types of representative messages are written to Lords more often at night. Looking at the gender of people writing to MPs, the data shows that men are disproportionately likely to be writing at night compared to women (although again, most messages by men are still sent during the day).

Examining the time people make reports helps to create a better picture of when people encounter an issue that a mySociety service might be helpful for, as well as when people have time to do something about it. This suggests possible ways a service could be differently reactive at different times of day and helps sharpen potential research questions.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash