If you finish this training module with a passing

score, you will be qualified to complete HITs posted

by the requester SentimentIt with the title Compare
Confirmation Hearing Statements.

Task: You will be presented two paragraphs from the

senators’ statements during congressional
confirmation hearings. Your task is to choose the
paragraph that is relatively more positive or less
negative.

To give you some background knowledge, the

congressional Senate committees hold confirmation
hearings to approve government nominees (e.g. the
Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary, Attorney
General, Circuit Judge, etc.). A confirmation hearing
proceeds as follows: It starts with the committee
chair’s and several other committee members’
opening statements followed by other congressmen’s
statements recommending a nominee. Then, the
nominee gives an opening statement. Finally, the
chair proceeds to a Q&A session where committee
members ask questions of a nominee. Long
statements are broken down to paragraphs to
facilitate this labeling task. Thus, some paragraphs
you will compare can be part of a longer statement.

A statement is a positive statement if it does one of

the following:
1. Speaking in support of a nominee

(e.g., Praising her personality, qualification for

the position, or career achievements)

2. Speaking in favor of any other person or an

institution

(e.g., The President, the administration, a

government agency, a party, etc.)

3. Giving a positive description of a situation

(e.g., Describing success of a policy

implementation)

E.g.) Praising a nominee’s qualification for a position:

“She is smart, she is tough, she is hard-working and

independent. She is a prosecutor's prosecutor, and
her qualifications are beyond reproach.”

“Under your leadership, the Enoch Pratt Free Library

has flourished and serves as an indispensable
beacon of higher learning and civic engagement for
the City of Baltimore and the entire State of
Maryland, and it is no surprise, given your four-
decade career of success and exemplary work in the
library sciences.”

E.g.) Complimenting another committee member:

“Mitch and I have known each other for a long time. I

got to know him when I was Mayor of Cleveland and
President of the National League of Cities and he
was a member of the Reagan Administration, and I
found him to be bright, hard-working, a man of
integrity and a man of his word.”

E.g.) Giving a positive description of a situation:

“The people of North Carolina are very pleased

about the results of the Base Realignment and
Closure (BRAC) Commission, and the Army and
Marine Corps ``Grow the Force'' initiative. Both Fort
Bragg and Camp LeJeune are slated to receive a
large influx of personnel. The Fort Bragg and Pope
Air Force Base BRAC Regional Task Force are
ultimately expecting total gains of about 40,000
military and civilian personnel in and around the city
of Fayetteville. I think that those changes are
ultimately going to be a great thing for the military
and the State of North Carolina.”
A statement is a negative statement if it is one of the
following:

1. Speaking against the nomination of a candidate

(e.g., Disqualifying her previous job

performance, talking about her misconduct, etc.)

2. Speaking unfavorably against any other person

or an institution

(e.g., The President, the administration, a

government agency, a party, etc.)

3. Giving a negative description of a situation

(e.g., Criticizing a policy, expressing concerns

about a current policy-relevant situation, etc.)

4. Grilling a nominee to give her a hard time

E.g.) Disqualifying a nominee’s candidacy:

“Mr. Holbrooke's nomination was announced by the
President on June 17, 1998, but it was not forwarded
to the Foreign Relations Committee until February
10, 1999, almost 1 year later. The delay was caused
by an 8-month-long criminal investigation of Mr.
Holbrooke by the Department of Justice for alleged
violations of U.S. ethics-in-government while he
worked for Credit Suisse First Boston, and they
always have initials after this, CSFB.”

E.g.) Denouncing a related government agency:

“The Department has also failed to hold another

Government agency accountable: the Internal
Revenue Service. We watched with dismay as that
powerful agency was weaponized and turned against
individual citizens. And why? What exactly did these
fellow citizens do to make their Government target
them? They had the courage to get engaged and
speak out in defense of faith, freedom, and our
Constitution.”

E.g.) Giving a negative description of a situation

“I am not saying it is like a Japanese bubble or a

stock market bubble, but the more this continues, I
have a hunch that something is going to happen and
it is not going to be good. That is, it is a trend,
whether it is a soft landing change, or whatnot. But
at some point, all that borrowing is going to add up
just to a heavy load, a heavy burden on this country,
and it seems to me that is something we have to be
very cognizant of.”

E.g.) Grilling a nominee to give him a hard time:

“Your duty as Attorney General is not to defend the

President and his policies; your duty is your oath, to
defend the Constitution. So my first question, with
that oath in mind, I ask you, do you believe that the
President has the legal authority to unilaterally defer
deportations in a blanket manner for millions of
individuals in the country illegally and grant them
permits and other benefits, regardless of what the
U.S. Constitution or--immigrations laws say?”

“I would like to know how to reconcile these two

statements. If what the President said was accurate,
then why in the world would the FBI be conducting
an ongoing criminal investigation? A rhetorical
question: Would the FBI investigation be just for
show? I would like--I am going to take Director
Comey at his word. So if there is an ongoing criminal
investigation at the FBI, then how could it be
possible--be appropriate for the President to reach a
conclusion about the facts before Director Comey?”
Warning: Some texts can be relatively neutral. Here
are some example statements.

1. Procedural statements

2. Describing a situation or explaining facts in a

neutral tone (e.g. Nominee’s career history)

3. None of these mentioned above

E.g.) Procedural statements:

“Before I turn to our opening statements, I want to

go over a couple of housekeeping items and explain
how we are going to proceed. Senator Leahy and I
will give our opening statements. Then I will call on
Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to introduce the
nominee.”

E.g.) Nominee’s career history in relatively neutral

tone:

“Ms. Lago currently serves as Assistant Secretary at

the Treasury Department. There, she works to
improve global market access for American goods
and services. Prior to joining Treasury, Ms. Lago held
a number of positions promoting economic
development in State and local governments and in
the private sector. She also served as the head of
the Office of International Development at the SEC.”

E.g.) Describing a situation in relatively neutral tone:

“Our argument was, if we walk off the playing field,

you bet, that invites a race to the bottom. But having
the United States on the playing field is a force for
driving standards up, and that is why your position is
so important, and our priority is those strong,
enforceable rules on labor and environment. In your
position, you are going to play a key role in ensuring
that each of these priorities is realized.”

E.g.) Explaining facts in neutral tone:

“As we all know, the nominee, Dr. Carla Hayden, is

the President's nominee to be the 14th Librarian of
Congress. Her successor, Dr. Billington, served ably
for 28 years. Senator Schumer and I worked last
year together to establish a term for this job, and so
Dr. Hayden is the first person to be appointed for a
specific term. That term would be 10 years.”
E.g.) None of these mentioned above:

“My first question is just out of historical curiosity.

Could you tell us a little about Enoch Pratt? His
name is everywhere, the Enoch Pratt Library, and
they said he was a merchant.”

Therefore, consider that statements can be placed

on a continuum of which one extreme end is positive
statements and the other extreme end is negative
statements. In the middle of the two ends,
statements that are neither the two can be located.

For each HIT, you will see two speech extracts. Your
task is to read both and select which of the two
statements is more positive or less negative. That is,

If statement A is…

If statement B is…

Then, choose
Positive

Negative

Statement A

Positive

Neutral or neither

Statement A

Neutral or neither

Negative

Statement A

Positive

Positive

The one relatively more positive

Negative

Negative

The one relatively less negative

Neutral or neither
Neutral or neither

Try your best judgment

It is important that you read each statement carefully,

and that you judge each by the standards listed
above and the information in the text. In comparing
the two paragraphs, DO NOT make your judgments
on your own knowledge of a person or a policy in
question, on statements from previous HITs in this
exercise, or on definitions of positive or negative
statements different from those listed above. Note
that the length of a statement is irrelevant to and
does not cue the type of the statement.

Your choices will be evaluated after you complete

each HIT. Low-quality workers, whose answers
significantly deviate from other workers,’ will not be
invited to participate in our future studies. Therefore,
read each statement carefully. Skimming or reading
quickly will result in low-quality evaluations.

This training module has two parts.

In Part 1, we will provide six practice HITs followed
by instructions about how the text extract should be
coded.

In Part 2, we will give you ten test HITs to complete.

To receive the qualification for the Compare
Confirmation Hearing Statements task, you must
complete eight out of ten of these test HITs correctly.