30 The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 1 2023). For example, in various studies on COVID-19 information conveyed via TikTok, researchers found that much of the information is misinformation (Basch, Meleo-Erwin, et al., 2021; McCashin & Murphy, 2022). Sharevski et al. (2023) found that in viewing TikToks that included debunked abortion misinformation, approximately 30% of participants believed the information to be true. These findings highlight the prevalence of health-related misinformation on TikTok and related implications for professionals and the general public alike. Therefore, to better understand current social discourse around OCD, we conducted a content analysis to answer the following research question: How are women portraying OCD on TikTok? Methods We conducted a deductive, qualitative content analysis of 50 TikTok videos to examine how OCD is being discussed and portrayed by women on the large-scale social media platform of TikTok, which encompasses the power to disrupt stigma and influence the narratives attributed to OCD. Our decision to utilize content analysis was influenced by the use of this methodology in existing literature exploring OCD and media (Fennell & Boyd, 2014; Robinson et al., 2019), and a content analysis aligned with our intent to interpret women’s portrayal of OCD through social discourse on TikTok. A content analysis is a systematic yet flexible process utilized to derive meaning from a set of data (Schreier, 2014). Qualitative content analysis is aligned with social constructivism and is concerned with exploring the “meaning and interpretation . . . of symbolic material, [and] the importance of context in determining meaning” (Schreier, 2014, p. 173). To describe meaning from our sample of TikTok videos, we followed the steps of a qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2014): define the research question; select the content to analyze; develop a coding frame; segment and trial code the data; evaluate the coding frame; conduct the main analysis; and interpret and present the findings. After determining our research question, we selected TikTok videos that met the following criteria: a) the TikTok video included the hashtag OCD (#OCD), and b) the primary person in the video presented as a woman and/or included she/her pronouns in their profile bio. We chose to focus on individuals presenting as women in this study because OCD symptomology varies based on gender in studies comparing cisgender women to cisgender men, with women having slightly higher rates of OCD diagnoses than men. Further, women exhibit cleaning-related symptoms more often than men (APA, 2022), and excessive cleanliness is commonly displayed in media depictions of OCD (Fennell & Boyd, 2014). Women also have unique experiences related to the intersectionality of gender, social discourse, and mental health diagnosis and treatment, or lack thereof (Bondi & Burman, 2001; Robinson et al., 2019). Further, women’s trivialization of OCD on social media may elicit stronger negative emotional reactions from consumers, such as annoyance and decreased sympathy toward individuals with OCD (Pavelko & Myrick, 2016). We chose the 50 TikTok videos with the most views for our sample (Dworkin, 2012). We were able to determine these videos by searching for “#OCD” within the TikTok app in February 2021. The sample was analyzed in March 2021. Similarly, in another content analysis, Fowler et al. (2021) selected the first 50 TikTok videos using a particular hashtag for their sample. They noted the influence of the TikTok algorithm, as the algorithm determines which videos are shown and in which order. Moreover, we determined the sample size based on other studies that engaged qualitative methods to analyze videos on various social media platforms, some of which utilized a sample size of fewer than 50 (Fowler et al., 2021; Johnson et al., 2019, 2021; Wallis, 2011). Next, we deductively determined codes in a concept-driven way (Schreier, 2014) based on the extant literature surrounding OCD, stigma, and popular understanding of the diagnosis. These initial codes were stigma perpetuated
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