CRISIS LAB

Participants will be uploading their data on their own one week after their interview appointment (TikTok requires 4 days to process the download request) and none of the interviewers will be working with the raw TikTok data.

 

Before participants upload their data, we will describe what the different data files contain and they will be encouraged to review their files and make sure there are no pieces of data they do not feel comfortable sharing with us. As they are uploading their data, we will ask them to indicate what they would like us to remove from their data before we look at it. They will also be given instructions on how they can filter and edit their own data without impacting the study's goals if they would like to take that additional step to increase their privacy before uploading their data for us to clean and filter.  

 

Once the data has been uploaded, members of our team who will have no contact with participants or access to their identifying information (name, age, email address, phone number, etc.) will go through and clean/filter their data to make sure identifying information (i.e. user handle/account information) are unlinked from the data and replaced with a random number such that the TikTok data can’t be traced back to individual users. We will also clean and remove data as instructed by the participant. 

 

We will then look at

• Number of log-ins per day and time spent on the app per log-in

  • These will be counted and summed by statistical software

• Number of videos viewed per log-in

  • These will be counted and summed by statistical software

• Hashtags and keywords searched and followed

• Theme of videos liked/commented on 

  • We will have research assistants who will not interact with participants or see their account/contact information count and label these posts with a theme (e.g. lifestyle, information, rants, comedy, advice, personal story). After labeling the posts, they will immediately delete the links to the post. 

  • Participants can choose to not have us look at or label these posts with a theme. In this case, the links will not be opened and they will be deleted immediately. 

• Number and theme of posts made by the user:

  • We will have research assistants who will not interact with participants or see their account/contact information count and label these posts with a theme (e.g. lifestyle, information, rants, comedy, advice, personal story). After labeling the posts, they will immediately delete the links to the post. 

  • Participants can choose to not have us look at or label these posts with a theme. In this case, the links will not be opened and they will be deleted immediately. 

• Ads sent to the user by TikTok:

  • We will have research assistants who will not interact with participants or see their account/contact information count and label ads sent to the participants with a theme. After labeling the ads, they will immediately delete any brand or product information. 

  • Participants can choose to not have us look at or label these ads. In this case, the brand and product information will be deleted from the file immediately. 

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If you have any other questions or concerns about how we are using TikTok data in this study, please don't hesitate to email us at tiktok.crisis@spu.edu.