TPC Journal-Vol 9 Issue 3-FULL

258 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 3 Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Theoretical saturation was obtained meeting this “critical methodological concept in qualitative research” (Walker, 2012, p. 37). The last step consisted of a review of the codes conjointly to discuss refinement of categories, impressions of the themes, and interpretation of the meanings (Schreier, 2012). Based on this analysis, the content of the interviews fit into six categories: professional title; graduate education; clinical hours; licensure exams; barriers to licensure; and recommendations for counselors, counselor educators, supervisors, and state boards. Trustworthiness In qualitative research, trustworthiness is used to acknowledge the subjectivity of experience while also engaging in rigorous methods to establish meaning. We embraced Corbin and Strauss’s (2008) assertion that in qualitative research, “findings are trustworthy and believable in that they reflect participants’, researchers’, and readers’ experiences with a phenomenon” (p. 302). To establish trustworthiness of the data, we used Creswell’s (2014) methods. Two researchers coded the comments separately and met to preserve congruence in coding definitions and check the trustworthiness of the process (Creswell, 2014). Coding was triangulated with a third researcher to add to the trustworthiness. Because all data in qualitative research pass and are filtered through the researchers’ lens, how we were positioned in this study is stated in the conceptual framework and authors’ positions. All of the authors identify as counselor educators or doctoral students in counselor education, and each author holds a professional counseling or marriage and family therapist license. Trustworthiness was deepened through participants as they were asked to take part in a member check at the conclusion of data analysis. The authors shared the categories and themes with participants to assess whether the conclusions were congruent with the participants’ experiences. Results Figure 1. Inductive and Deductive Categories The categories were derived from deductive (professional title, graduate education, licensure exams, and clinical hours) and inductive (barriers to licensure and recommendations for counselors, counselor educators, supervisors, and state boards) approaches to data analysis. Overall, the Paying Additional Fees