Much research relating to children and death has focused on the age-graded developmental model originally proposed by Nagy in the late 1940s. Children are alleged to pass from an infantile to a mature view, seeing death first as separation, then as the result of intervention by a supernatural being, and finally as an irreversible biological process. Accepted theory for thirty years, scholars have since noted difficulty in duplicating Nagy's findings and have come to question the universal application of the developmental model. Bluebond-Langner proposes an alternative model in which all views of death are present in all stages of development. She maintains that the particular orientation a child displays is a result of personal and social experiences.

Structural differences between communities which exhibit a tendency toward innovation and communities which fail to exhibit this tendency are studied. The Model Cities program is used as a test case for the tendency toward innovation, and two samples (applicants and non-applicants) are matched on the basis of population size. Four structural elements are examined as related to applicant status: community differentiation, community poverty, community social-human resource commitment, and the centralization of local governmental structure. Each of the structural elements is further refined by operationally defining specific measures. Community differentiation is measured by occupational and racial/ethnic differentiation. Community poverty is reflected by economic and educational poverty. The variable of community social-human resource commitment is developed using the following measures: per capita community fund goals, per capita amounts raised, per cent of goal raised, and the number of private social agencies in a community that are devoted to social-human resource needs. The centralization of local governmental structure is measured by the presence or absence of the city manager form of government, the presence or absence of non-partisan election, the size of city councils, and the per cent of the city council elected at-large.