Replicate the Rise and Decline of Issues in Congress

The exercise is to evaluate patterns of congressional attention to major topics similar to those in the rising and declining issues already identified in this Scenario.

Basic Instructions

1. Click here to open a new window with the analysis tool.
2. Select the appropriate dataset. In this case, our target dataset, "Congressional Hearings," is the default.
3. Select one or two major topics that you would like to evaluate. For example, if you would like to see if Education exhibits particular patterns of attention, click in the box next to Education.
4. Select appropriate beginning and ending Congressional Sessions. (Don't forget to click the option for "the Congressional Sessions", rather than "Years"!)
5. Select to graph the activity as a "percent of all activity."
6. Finally, click the button "Search."
7. A chart will appear graphing the hearing trends across each of the issues you have selected.
   (The Chart Tutorial provides detailed instructions about changing the chart appearance.)