You definitely don't need to read the whole article. As I believe someone already mentioned, CTRL + F, type the keyword, hit enter. I just skim a few sentences that has the keyword highlighted, decide if there's a positive or negative sentiment or not, paste a sentence with the keyword, then keep moving. It really shouldn't take more than a minute and a half at most to do one of these.
@hapless: Thanks, I didn't even think about that. I have pretty fast Internet, but some of these are so slow to load. Now I know why. @footballchick: Yes, lawd they are boring. I can only do about 20 until I have to switch to a survey or something for a few minutes. I hope you get your stats up soon so you can join in on the average/well-paying boredom.
For some reason, I see 'neutrality' way too often, and then I read through the whole article trying to convince myself as to whether I made the right choice or not. Just for example, there was an article about a company's massive ambitious project, and the article definitely seemed 'positive' at first glance ... but on a full reading, the author's tone turned out to be neutral. Then I went overboard and checked the author's other articles on the same topic (yeah, I should not do that), and I came back even more convinced of her neutrality on the subject. So I put "neutral" (and then wasted more time choosing "the" one sentence that supposedly "strongly persuaded" me, though of course my choice wasn't really based on any one sentence). lmao I need to get myself a clue on how to do these HITs properly. (Yes I know, just skim and and click. If only I could dismiss my discomfort when doing that.) Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy.
I'm not quite THAT extreme, but I think I spend too much time over-thinking these, too...in addition to over-reading them.