Gordon's research examines contextual and social factors that affect children and families. She has studied how childcare quality affects child development, the relationships between youth gang participation and delinquency, the association between community context and child wellbeing, the causes and consequences of grandmother co-residential support for young mothers, and an evaluation of an innovative job program for young couples. She is the author of two textbooks (Regression Analysis for the Social Sciences; Applied Statistics for the Social and Health Sciences) and has published her research in leading academic journals including the American Journal of Evaluation, Child Development, Criminology, Demography, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Journal of Research on Adolescence.