Guide to APA

APA (American Psychological Association) format is the citation method used most commonly in the science and social science fields, such as sociology, psychology, and biology.

The below information was derived from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Additional resources:

• APA website: https://apastyle.apa.org/
• Sample student paper (APA) with annotations: Sample Annotated Student Paper in APA Style
• Purdue Owl APA instructions: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_style_introduction.html

In-Text citations

• Short Quotes: For short quotes that consist of less than 40 words, the writer will include them within the text and distinguish them from the rest of the paragraph by beginning and ending with quotation marks (“ ”). Your source would be included in parentheses within the sentence with the last name of the author, the date of publication and the page number listed. (Author, year, p. #)

Example: In the authors’ findings they reported, “there was evidence to support the claim that a college education increases a person’s salary” (James, 2007, p. 8).

 

• Long Quotes: Longer quotes of 40 words or more are presented as a block and indented one half inch from the left side margin. It will be double spaced and feature no quotation marks. Cite the page number within a parentheses () and conclude with no punctuation marks. Note that parenthetical quotes capturing general findings are cited differently than a narrative quote that is taken directly from an author.

Example:

o   Parenthetical:

Researchers have studied how people talk to themselves:

Inner speech is a paradoxical phenomenon. It is an experience that is central to many people’s everyday lives, and yet it presents considerable challenges to any effort to study it scientifically. Nevertheless, a wide range of methodologies and approaches have combined to shed light on the subjective experience of inner speech and its cognitive and neural underpinnings. (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015, p. 957)

o   Narrative:

Flores et al. (2018) described how they addressed potential researcher bias when working with an intersectional community of transgender people of color:
Everyone on the research team belonged to a stigmatized group but also held privileged identities. Throughout the research process, we attended to the ways in which our privileged and oppressed identities may have influenced the research process, findings, and presentation of results. (p. 311)

• Anonymous or No Author: If the reading that you are citing has no author, include the first few words of the piece and the year. Use double quotation marks around the title of an article, a chapter, or a web page. For a periodical, book, brochure, or report use italics for the title.
  Example: For a source like: “Barcelona to Ban Islamic Veils in Some Public Spaces” by anonymous in 2010, the in-text citation would be: (“Barcelona to Ban Burqa,” 2010)

 

If you are citing the piece in a narrative format, you can include it as: “Barcelona to Ban Burqa” (2010) maintains that the decision is aimed at removing forms of dress that impedes identification.
 

• An Author Cited by Another Author: If you refer to an author’s work that is cited by another author but you are not integrating the former’s work specifically, you will want to include the reading and cite the source that referenced it.

Example: You are referring to a quote from Levy 2010 that you came across in Addams 2019, the citication would be: Levy’s findings (as cited in Clark, 2009) show a direct correlation between parental neglect and literacy struggles.

Bibliography

What is it?: An APA format bibliography is an alphabetical listing of all sources that might be used to write an academic paper, essay, article, or research paper—oftentimes works that are covering psychology or psychology-related topics.

Why do we write bibliographies?

• To protect your readers from misinformation
• To protect your writing and the writing of others from plagiarism. You don’t want someone using your words as their own, and you shouldn’t do that either. Bibliographies give credit where credit is due.
• To help for organization and future research

Steps for an APA Bibliography:

1. Start a new page
   Your working bibliography should always be kept separate from the rest of your paper. Start it on a new page, with the title “Bibliography” centered at the top and in bold text.
2. Gather Your Sources
   Gathering your sources can be particularly helpful when outlining and writing your paper. Remember your bibliography helps you!
3. Compile all the sources you might possibly use in your paper (things you’ve read, things you’ve cited, primary and secondary texts). While you might not use all of these sources in your paper, having a complete list will make it easier later on when you prepare your reference section.
4. Reference Each Source
   Your references should always be listed alphabetically by the author’s last name, and they should be double-spaced. The first line of each reference should start on the far left, while each additional line of a single reference should be a few spaces to the right of the left margin, which is known as a hanging indent.

• The order for citation is as follows:
• Last name of first author (followed by their first initial)
• The year the source was published in parentheses
• The title of the source
• The journal that published the source (in italics)
• The volume number, if applicable (in italics)
• The issue number, if applicable
• Page numbers (in parentheses)
• The URL or "doi" in lowercase letters followed by a colon and the doi number, if applicable

Examples: