Her areas of specialization include education, race and ethnicity, stratification, immigration, and demography. Her recent work, published in Social Science Research and the Journal of Higher Education, has focused on whether social background and occupational expectations account for rising college expectations over time, and how social background relates to choice of college majors. Goyette has served as a reviewer for numerous sociology and education journals, most frequently for Sociology of Education, and has been chair of the David Lee Stevenson Award for the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association.