The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 621 their beliefs that advising has a critical impact on student success, particularly for students of color; and their awareness that the faculty members’ perspectives may not speak to what is actually experienced by doctoral candidates. There also was a need to discuss what is actually meant by a successful dissertation. For the purpose of this research, the team determined successful as completing the dissertation process and having a degree conferred. Additionally, the first author participated in another project from the larger qualitative study that allowed access to participant responses regarding other topics that were not analyzed as part of this study. The information obtained from the other project was not shared during meetings for coding nor data analysis. Further bracketing was achieved by fleshing out any potential areas of overlap with the fifth author, who had knowledge of all transcripts but did not participate in coding. Memos were kept regarding each teammember’s process. Second, the researchers completed line-by-line, verbatim coding to identify repeated concepts and words within the transcripts. Third, the research team met on a regular basis to ensure consistency in coding and to resolve any discrepancies in the analysis process. During each of these meetings, memos were maintained to track methodological decisions and reactions to the data. Memos were kept by each coder to note thoughts, reactions, and methodological decisions during paired and individual coding. These memos were reviewed periodically by the fifth author, who was not actively participating in the coding process. Finally, the researchers questioned and investigated the constructs for themes to be sure to indicate the depth and breadth of the participants’ perspectives. Positioning The coding team was comprised of the first four authors. The coding team consisted of three counselor educators and one graduate school assistant director. Coding teammembers were from three institutions, with two teammembers working at the same institution (one counselor educator and one graduate school assistant director). Three of the coding teammembers identified as Black women, and one member identified as a Black man. All four coding teammembers held Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees earned within the last 7 years. Two of the four coding teammembers completed their dissertation process within the last 18 months. All four of the coding teammembers worked at institutions conferring doctoral-level degrees. All but one coding teammember had etic (outsider) status, as they had not yet served on doctoral dissertation committees. One coding teammember had emic (insider) status, having served on two dissertation committees and participated in three dissertation defense presentations and discussions. This coding teammember had not yet served as a chairperson of a dissertation. Coding team members with etic positioning knew that their own experiences as doctoral students would be the most present in their minds when coding data. This required a significant amount of bracketing and identification of a priori codes. The first four authors’ initial meeting was dedicated to discussing these factors to ensure internal researcher accountability. Potential biases of the research team included: (a) over-identifying with the data; (b) bracketing own negative experiences; (c) race and gender considerations (how our race and gender impacts how we see the recommendation); (d) having a higher education perspective and not a counselor education perspective; (e) role of privilege and how it plays out in the dissertation process and the lasting impact on early career progress; (f) awareness of differing program structures (some doctoral students mentored master’s-level students and developed writing teams, setting them up to be more successful once they had graduated); (g) having participated in faculty searches and seen successful dissertation advising (turning dissertations into manuscripts) be a key component in who is hired; and (h) having projects prioritized over opportunities that helped the doctoral candidate be more successful (e.g., publications, grants). These were all areas that required the coding team to discuss
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