3. Narrow Your Focus

Once you've done some initial background reading, it's time to narrow down your focus to what you really want to write about. Also, you will need to have chosen the two religions you want to compare and contrast by about this point in your research. Now, you can begin to identify the specific similarities and differences that you will discuss in your paper.

Ask yourself:

What interests me about these two religions?

Which similarities and differences do I want to focus on?

What factors might make for an interesting comparison or contrast?

Consider the factors of a religion that you could research to compare and contrast. For example:

Morals

Sacrifices

Afterlife / Heaven & Hell

Founding / Leaders

As you start to clarify your focus, you'll want to continue to look for more sources. In order to help you find more related sources about your topic, you'll want to identify keywords to help you search.

Keywords

As you think about what concepts you want to write about, think about what particular words might be found in a good article about that topic. For instance, if you are comparing and contrasting the moral teachings of Buddhism and Christianity. Think of related keywords:

Moral → ideal, virtuous, righteous, appropriate

Teachings → doctrine, creed, instructions, guidance

Tip: When researching religions, remember that different articles may use different terms, so you may need to try multiple variations of words that describe religions.

For example: Islam, Islamic, Muslim are all terms associated with the religion of Islam and each can be used as keywords, possibly giving different results.

Keywords work best by trial-and-error. Never do only one search. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search. Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources.