2023 Faculty Research Award from the Consortium for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Awarded to Dr. Jae Puckett

May 3, 2023 - Shelly DeJong

Dr. Jae Puckett, an ecological-community psychology faculty member at MSU, was awarded the Spring 2023 Faculty Research Award from the Consortium for Sexual and Gender Minority Health for their article “Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals’ Daily Experiences of Rumination,” published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 

“The consortium has been an important place for me to connect with others doing LGBTQ+ focused research and I am honored to have been chosen for this award,” said Dr. Puckett.  “This particular study provides important findings advancing our understanding of the unique minority stressors that transgender and gender diverse people experience. The findings have helped to advance our theoretical understanding of minority stress, which is an essential step to ensuring future research better reflects the lives of transgender and gender diverse people.”  

Dr. Puckett’s research was an intensive daily diary study with 181 transgender and gender diverse individuals ranging between 16-40 years of age. Dr. Puckett gathered qualitative data on the ruminative thoughts of the 181 participants daily over the course of 56 days. Rumination refers to getting stuck thinking about a topic, like replaying an experience of misgendering or instance of rejection. Exploring ruminative thoughts provides a unique opportunity to learn more about the challenges that transgender and gender diverse people experience daily.  

“Transgender and gender diverse people face a myriad of daily stressors within U.S. society,” writes Dr. Puckett. “Due to these minority stressors, transgender and gender diverse people report elevated anxiety, depression, stress, and suicidality among other health issues.” 

The study looks to see if increased rumination is one way that the daily stressors reveal themselves in the transgender and gender diverse population. Dr. Puckett gathered qualitative data on the ruminative thoughts of the 181 participants over the course of 56 days.  

The review committee remarked that Dr. Puckett’s article provides important insights into the lived experiences of transgender and gender-diverse people. They wrote that it “provides rich data for in-depth analysis, ultimately exploring important nuances of the social and interpersonal stressors unique to transgender and gender-diverse populations and their impact on individual thought processes and impacts on the transgender and gender-diverse community’s health.” 

The MSU Consortium for Sexual and Gender Minority Health is comprised of faculty and graduate students from the Colleges of Social Science, Education, Communication Arts and Sciences, Lyman Briggs, Human Medicine, and Arts and Lenders. Their members study sexual and gender minority physical and mental health with a focus on minority stress, the life course perspective, and intersectionality, using social-ecological approaches.   

The Faculty Research Award is designed to recognize scholarship on sexual and gender minority health that reflects and/or advances the mission and aims of the Consortium.  The award provides $1,500 in professional development funds for the achievement.