Research Paper – APA Style

Sometimes citations can give us a headache, but these APA basics should help!

General Information on APA Style

APA style is a form of academic writing guidelines that has been created by the American Psychological Association. There are many editions of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA manual for short); the current edition as of 2010 is the 6th edition. This style has been created for use in the Social and Behavioral Sciences and is used by a variety of fields including by writers in the fields of Psychology, Counseling and Education.

APA Style Requirements for Citing Research

APA style requires that an author provide a formal reference to all works that have been consulted in the process of researching a topic. This includes any information that is used to support or refute the arguments you make in your paper or in a presentation format.

APA In Text Citations and References Page

APA style requires both a list of references at the end of a paper as well as "in text" citations following a specific format that lists the author or authors and the year that the work was published.

APA Examples- In Text Citations

    * For books, you must cite the author or authors by their last name within the sentence where you refer to their work. You must also include the year that the work was published in parentheses.

    * You must also cite the author or authors by their last name and refer to their work in past tense as in, "Smith and Jones (1996) found..." or "Johnson (2010) discovered..." or in past perfect tense such as "Jones (2008) has found...".

    * You can also cite in text by placing the reference in parentheses directly after the sentence where you refer to their work. (Jones & Provost, 2008). When listing more than one author in parentheses at the end of a sentence you should use the & [ampersand] instead of writing out the word "and".

    * If you use more than one source to support the same idea, listed the citations alphabetically by last name separated by a semi-colon directly after the idea that you are presenting.  (Coney & Parker, 2008; Lile & Marks, 2000).

  * When quoting from a source you must put the quoted information in quotations and cite the page number where the information can be found directly after the quote. For example, your paper might look like this: According to Smithwick (2009), "Educators often cited lack of motivation as the explanation for low standardized test scores at their school in areas of Math and English" (p. 78).

How to Format Your Reference Page in APA Style

The reference page be placed at the end of your paper and should be formatted according to APA style. References should be listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name and first initial. The word "References" should appear at the top of the page, centered. If the reference is long and takes up more than one line, every line after the first should be indented 10 spaces. The references page should be double spaced. The title of a journal and the issue of the journal should appear italicized. There should be a single space in between each reference.

Tip: If you are a visual learner then the easiest way to learn to format your APA references page is to find a citation of the same type as yours and copy the formatting for your own reference.

Here is an example of a reference page in APA format.

References

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Anderson, L. (1977). Global education: An overview. Social Education, 41(1), 35-36.

Anderson, J.L., Levis-Fitzgerald, M.R., & Rhoads, R.A. (2003). Democratic learning and

          global citizenship: The contribution of one-unit seminars. The Journal of General

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Apikul, C. (2006). Enabling public schools - Paraná, Brazil. A description of the United

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          Retrieved April 5, 2007 from http://www.iosn.net/education/case-studies/parana/.

Bacharach, S.B. (1989). Organizational theories: Some criteria for evaluation. Academy

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Barbosa, R., Jofili, Z., & Watts, M. (2004). Cooperating in constructing knowledge: case

         studies from chemistry and citizenship. International Journal of Science

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Davies, I, & Issitt, J. (2005). Reflections on citizenship education in Australia, Canada

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Davies, L. (2006). Global citizenship: abstraction or framework for action? Educational

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