The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 467 community, developing professional identity, and providing leadership opportunities. Recent research has identified program evaluation training lacking in counselor education programs for doctoral students (Sink & Lemich, 2018), suggesting a need for increased attention in this area. Implications for Prospective Doctoral Students For students seeking programs, they are advised to appraise whether programs provide supportive mentorship and formal and informal learning opportunities, have a curricula focus that best fits their goals especially with regard to research preparation, and prioritize both faculty and student diversity. Burkholder (2012) suggested that student persistence and retention was bolstered by faculty communicating a genuine personal interest in students. Students who perceive a humanistic atmosphere from counselor education faculty are more likely to persist in counseling programs (Burkholder, 2012). Students should therefore consider their own academic and personal interests and needs and whether the programmeets these. Hoskins and Goldberg (2005) also reported previously that the match between student interests and program offerings was an important predictor of doctoral student persistence. Consideration for institution type and classification also appears important to prospective doctoral student decision making. For example, a student who wishes to develop a research identity may be best suited for a doctoral program at a research-intensive university that prioritizes research, whereas a doctoral program at a teaching institution may be a better fit for a student who has less proclivity toward research and who is seeking to develop specialized teaching competencies. Hinkle et al. (2014) previously reported that students typically sought doctoral study to become a professor or clinical leader, which seems consistent with how participants in this study identified focus areas of highquality doctoral programs. Lastly, faculty members should be sensitive to the needs of doctoral students as they engage in multiple roles and relationships such as co-teaching, supervising master’s students, and the dissertation process (Baltrinic et al., 2016; Dickens et al., 2016; Dollarhide et al., 2013). This is especially important for students from diverse backgrounds (e.g., minority race/ethnicity and sexual/ affective orientation), who are often engaged in their communities and have more roles to balance (Cartwright et al., 2018). Limitations and Implications for Future Studies There were several limitations to this study despite the research team’s intention to perform a rigorous inquiry. The researchers’ bias and reactivity, which are common threats to validity in qualitative research (Bickman & Rog, 2008), were potential influencers at several study stages. Therefore, the research team, which consisted of two counselor educators and three doctoral students with doctoral program experience, attempted to establish trustworthiness and eliminate threats to validity by bracketing biases, taking methodological notes, and using consensus coding. Limitations may have also impacted the transferability of study findings. As with most qualitative studies, the sample was small (N = 15) and could even be considered small for the chosen method of inquiry according to some sources (Creswell & Poth, 2017; Morse, 1994). Therefore, the findings may not be fully transferable (i.e., generalizable) to other CES doctoral faculty. When using maximal variation sampling, a research team intentionally seeks to identify extreme differences in participant characteristics to avoid early redundancy (Suri, 2011). This can result in over- or underrepresentation of overall sample demographic characteristics compared to the population.
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