Embodiments of the present invention provide a system that that can be used to determine whether a sentiment analysis model is portable between two data sets. During operation, the system analyzes the text of a respective review in a data set (e.g., a set of reviews) using the sentiment analysis model to determine a sentiment expressed in the review. The system then computes a confidence score, which indicates the accuracy of a respective sentiment. The system subsequently determines a confidence score distribution for various sentiments, as determined by the sentiment analysis model. The system determines the significance of changes between the confidence score distribution and a benchmark confidence score distribution, which is associated with a benchmark data set for which the sentiment analysis model yields a high accuracy. The system can then determine whether the sentiment analysis model is portable to the data set based on the significance of changes.