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Philosophy & Religion Research Guide

About This Guide

This guide contains library resources to help you locate quality, authoritative sources for your Philosophy, Ethics, or Religion research. You'll learn how to develop your research topic, then find, evaluate, and cite your sources. Use the yellow tabs along the left to guide you.

The library is here to help you along the way! If you have a research question, use the Get Help from a Librarian tab to start a chat or schedule a research appointment.

Whenever you're conducting research, please ensure that you read your assignment carefully to identify the types of sources your instructor requires. Please check with your instructor if you have any questions about your assignment.

The Research Process

The Research Process: Information Need, Pre-Research, Research Question, Search Strategy, Search, Evaluate, Cite.

The Research Process

  1. Information need: What is your assignment asking you to find? 
  2. Pre-research: Choose a topic, learn more about it, narrow it down, find keywords.
  3. Research question: What is your assignment asking you to create?
  4. Search strategy: Where will you look for information?
  5. Search: Start with the main ideas of your topic or research question.
  6. Evaluate every source you find - for credibility and usefulness.
  7. Cite: You have found credible sources and answered your research question!