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Abstract: The 2010 British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted long-standing questions about energy exploration and its social and environmental implications. Sociologists studying environmental disasters have documented the social impacts resulting from these events and dissatisfaction with government and industry responses. In this paper, we use data from a survey conducted during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to examine how Louisiana and Florida residents'' social backgrounds, experiences with the spill, and trust in information sources predict their perceptions of governmental and BP response efforts. We find that direct personal impacts and compensation strongly influence the evaluations of responding organizations. Age and place of residence also predict such assessments. Finally, levels of confidence in television news and BP as sources of information appear to shape Gulf Coast residents'' opinions about the work of organizations responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Comprehensive land use plans and their corresponding regulations play a role in determining the nature of the built environment and community design, which are factors that influence population health and health disparities. To determine the level in which a plan addresses healthy living and active design, there is a need for a systematic, reliable and valid method of analyzing and scoring health-related content in plans and regulations. This paper describes the development and validation of a scoring tool designed to measure the strength and comprehensiveness of health-related content found in land use plans and the corresponding regulations. The measures are scored based on the presence of a specific item and the specificity and action-orientation of language. To establish reliability and validity, 42 land use plans and regulations from across the United States were scored January-April 2016. Results of the psychometric analysis indicate the scorecard is a reliable scoring tool for land use plans and regulations related to healthy living and active design. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) scores showed strong inter-rater reliability for total strength and comprehensiveness. ICC scores for total implementation scores showed acceptable consistency among scorers. Cronbach's alpha values for all focus areas were acceptable. Strong content validity was measured through a committee vetting process. The development of this tool has far-reaching implications, bringing standardization of measurement to the field of land use plan assessment, and paving the way for systematic inclusion of health-related design principles, policies, and requirements in land use plans and their corresponding regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]