RMP.1:4.3.1 - Find and interpret the relevant material

1. Say what answer is needed. Restate the difficulty in the receiver’s terms and say how an answer could change the next action. Use the texts and search facilities available; consider time or specialist help when they limit what you can resolve. Clarify a difference in the question before spending effort on the wrong one.
2. Locate passages that can answer it. Start with the available texts, their contents and their own terminology. Search the words used in the question and likely synonyms; follow a relevant passage to its definitions, conditions, examples or cited basis when they affect the answer. Use F.1 to choose sources by what their claims or limitations contribute. If one identified source already answers the question, use it directly.
3. Repair the reading where needed. When a search misses expected material, try another expression or source. Read a found passage with the surrounding context needed to interpret it; F.0.1 helps recover a consequential expression’s local meaning. A correctly understood passage may concern a different population, setting or use. State that difference and seek the material needed for this question. Show the corrected answer so the receiver can tell what the repair achieved.
4. Return what the sources support. Explain the answer and point to the passages and editions on which it depends. Keep omissions and uncertainty that affect its use visible. A.10 supplies the claim-bound source and provenance relations. If the answer is sufficient, stop. The explanation already being used may carry the whole result; a separate retrieval log is needed only when reproducing or diagnosing the search is itself part of the work.

A missing text, unknown edition or unresolved applicability limits the conclusion that depends on it. Preserve the answerable remainder and say which source or competent contribution would resolve the remaining question. Further search is useful when its possible answers could change the receiving use; the presence of an unanswered question alone does not prescribe a new study.