J. Jill Suitor

Ph.D., Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook (1985)

Specialization

parent-adult child relations, family caregiving, sibling relations in adulthood, interpersonal relations & well-being, mixed methods

Dr. J. Jill Suitor is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Associate of the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University. Her research focuses the effects of interpersonal relations on well-being, particularly relationships among parents, adult children, and adult grandchildren as well as adult siblings.  Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Spencer Foundation, and the USDA for a total of more than 30 years and has resulted in the publication of more than 150 journal articles and book chapters. She has also served as a standing member of the National Institutes of Health Study Sections on Personality, Social Psychology, and Interpersonal Processes and Social Sciences and Population Studies. She has received the Behavioral and Social Sciences Distinguished Career Award from the Gerontological Society of America and the Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Aging and the Life Course of the American Sociological Association. She is an elected Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and an elected member of the Sociological Research Association. Since 2001, she has led the Within Family Differences Study (WFDS), a mixed-methods NIA-supported panel investigation of the causes and consequences of within-family differentiation across three generations in more than 550 families. 

Faculty Associate: Center on Aging and the Life Course