[9] Prior to her retirement, Hansen was a member of the faculty in the area of Counseling Psychology at the University of Minnesota, where she served as Director of the Center for Interest Measurement Research.
[11][12] Hansen's research explored vocational interests in relation to gender, cultural background, and personality with the goal of using the information to help people make career decisions.
In graduate school, she worked with Charles Johansson in exploring vocational interests in relation to personality characteristics, such as dogmatism (i.e., rigid certainty about the correctness of one's views).
[14] The Strong Interest Inventory has been widely used to identify people's preferred activities as a means of helping them to find suitable careers.
[20] Notably, Hansen and her colleagues observed gender differences in the structure of interests using Holland's scheme, even when male and female participants were matched in occupational titles – suggesting that the theoretical model may need some adjustments to better account for women's behavior.
[22] Hansen collaborated with Thomas J. Bouchard and others on research exploring the vocational interests of twins, including some who had been reared apart due to adoption.