Race differences in acceptance of cremation: Religion, Durkheim, and death in the African American community
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Research has demonstrated race differences in the acceptance and occurrence of cremation (International Cemetery and Funeral Association [ICFA], 2005). However, there has not been an attempt to explain these differences sociologically. Two phases of research were conducted to investigate race differences in the acceptance of cremation. In phase one, using a representative sample of university students at a university in the southern United States ( N=510), racial differences in the acceptance of cremation were examined. Quantitative results suggest that African Americans are less accepting of cremation than whites, yet the specific mechanisms that produce this difference remain unclear. In the second phase of this study, qualitative interviews ( N=17) were used to further investigate the robust race difference. African Americans report both social as well as religious reasons for greater adherence to traditional burial customs. Higher levels of cohesion and religiosity, combined with a history of oppression among African Americans, are considered within a Durkheimian framework as mechanisms that contribute to the difference in attitudes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".