Jaclyn is a social psychologist and qualitative and quantitative researcher with expertise in gender- and sexuality-related health disparities, body image, and eating disorders. With nearly a decade of research experience across social and clinical psychology, Jaclyn leverages her diverse skill set to support evaluation, planning, and analytic projects. She has methodological expertise in psychometrics and qualitative research approaches, and works across teams to identify and refine instrumentation for evaluation projects, as well as generate ideas for evaluation planning and implementation.

Jaclyn works across teams on the Evaluation Training and Technical Assistance Center to support the evaluation of sexual violence prevention efforts in the Department of Defense. She is also the evaluation lead for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pilot program to support culturally competent communication about vaccines for Black adults, as well as the metrics task lead for the Positive Adolescent Interpersonal Relationships project. She recently supported an equity assessment of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. She is also helping grow NORC’s research portfolio related to promoting positive body image and preventing eating disorders for people across the gender and sexuality spectrums.

Before joining NORC, Jaclyn worked as the lab coordinator for the Stigma, Objectification, Bodies, and Resistance Lab at the University of Western Ontario, researching women’s social treatment, mental health, and resistance. She then worked as a postdoctoral research scholar in the Body Image, Sexuality, and Health Lab at San Diego State University, where she served as the project director for a large clinical trial of an eating disorder prevention program for sexual minority men in Southern California (the PRIDE Body Project). Jaclyn worked as an adjunct professor in the departments of Psychology at San Diego State University and King’s University College, teaching courses on the psychology of prejudice and the psychology of human sexual behavior, and has published nearly 30 empirical research papers in peer-reviewed academic journals on topics related to gender, body image, eating disorders, mental health, sexual and intimate violence, and social activism.

Jaclyn’s background is in feminist and trauma-informed approaches to qualitative methods, and she regularly presents on qualitative methods in psychology research. She is also a skilled science communicator, sharing updates with an audience of over 50,000 people on Twitter.