The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 459 individual coding of transcripts. The last author also created memos during collective meetings with all four research teams. The last author created memos immediately following interviews, though they refrained from sharing the memos with the research teams to avoid biasing the coding and analysis process. Several research teams used software platforms to analyze the data, and were permitted to select their own software platforms for data analysis. Researcher Positioning for the Current Study For this study, the first five authors comprised the coding team that examined the research question pertinent to the components of high-quality programs. The sixth and last author conducted the interviews and did not code data for the reasons cited above. Among the five coding team members, both etic and emic perspectives were represented. Two of the authors had an emic perspective, as they had previously worked at a doctoral CES program during their faculty career. Three of the authors held an etic perspective as doctoral students who had not yet worked as full-time faculty members. Coding team members were from different counselor education programs to reduce bias. With regard to other demographic characteristics, four members of the coding team identified as Caucasian, and one member identified as African American. Three team members identified as female, and two identified as male. The team members were from a wide range of programs. One doctoral student was from a very high research-intensive university; one faculty member and two doctoral students were from a research-intensive university; and one faculty member was from a private, nonprofit online university. Trustworthiness Trustworthiness was enhanced through procedures identified in the literature (e.g., Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Credibility was addressed through considering the positioning of the interviewer and research team members. Emic and etic perspectives were sought for each research team to reduce the potential for bias. The interviewer and research team each bracketed their biases prior to their involvement in the study and continued the process of bracketing throughout the study to reduce bias. One bias the researchers bracketed, for example, was their involvement and experiences as faculty and students in a CES program. All interviewees worked at separate CES programs to avoid overrepresentation of data. Research team members were also from different CES programs to reduce bias in coding and analysis. Emergent, in vivo, verbatim line-by-line open coding was used by each research team to avoid interpreting data too early during the coding process and thus to reduce interpretation bias. The interviewer did not participate in coding the data to minimize bias through being too close to the data. The last author also clearly identified and trained the research teams, with the goal of enhancing consistency. Member checks were used to enhance credibility, and the last author also kept an audit trail of the process. Purposive sampling and thick description was used to ensure adequate representation of perspectives and thus establish adequate transferability and dependability (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Results Through data analysis, five categories emerged to capture the components that the participants described as critical to ensuring a high-quality doctoral program: relationships, mission alignment, development of a counselor educator identity, inclusiveness of diversity, and Carnegie classification. Each theme is described below, with support provided for each theme via participants’ quotes.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU5MTM1