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This article serves as an introduction to the issue's special feature on "The Nuclear Threat." The early sociological literature on nuclear war related issues is reviewed and the dearth of sociological work in this area since the early 1960s is documented. A new call for sociological theory and research on the nuclear threat is issued and possible topics are outlined. The paper concludes with a brief review of the papers that make up the special feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costner (1965) showed that many of the most commonly used measures of association may be conceptually interpreted as indicating proportional reduction in prediction error. But because it is verbally cumbersome, and conceptually complex for some measures, the proportional reduction in error interpretation has not been widely incorporated in research reports where appropriate. Instead, measures of association continue to be interpreted in abstract terms distinguishing between broad levels of strength. This paper demonstrates that all proportional reduction in error measures of association may be alternately interpreted as indicating the percent of variation explained. Because this interpretation is conceptually meaningful in a manner highly relevant for scientific investigation, more convenient to apply in research reports, and already familiar to most social scientists, it is argued that it be standardly applied to all proportional reduction in error measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintenance, an important concept in the organizational literature, is often assumed to be a key factor in the low levels of sensitivity to client needs and demands apparent in many human service organizations. This paper uses data from a national sample of juvenile courts to demonstrate, however, that maintenance may relate to other variables in ways that are at variance with the common assumption. The maintenance of internal organizational operations is bound closely to the development of ties to the community; as a result, strong emphasis on maintenance actually leads to high levels of sensitivity to clients when certain environmental forces demand it. This positive relation is especially strong when organizations are highly vulnerable to external pressures. Such results suggest a contingent view of the role of maintenance in organizations and imply some further directions for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]