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APA Style Guide

This brief guide is intended as a quick reference to the most common types of citations used in research papers. If an example of the type of source you are using is NOT included here, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5^th edition, 2001 [Call # BF 76.7 .P83]. Copies of the manual are available at the Reference Desks in both the Rivera Library and the Science Library, as well as from the Reserve Services desk in Rivera Library.

PLEASE BE SURE TO DOUBLE SPACE CITATIONS. For space saving reasons, the citations below are single spaced. APA requires double spacing of citations.

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Print Sources
Book entry, single author

Arnheim, R. (1971). Art and visual perception. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Book entry, multiple authors

When a work has between two and six authors, list all authors. When a work has more than six authors, list only the last name of the first author followed by "et al."

Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis: 

     University of Minnesota Press.

Roeder, K. et al. (1967). Nerve cells and insect behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

     University Press

Corporate authorship

Institute of Financial Education. (1982). Managing personal funds. Chicago: Midwestern

     Publishing.

No author identified

Experimental psychology. (1938). New York: Holt.

Citing items in an anthology

Rubenstein, J.P. (1967). The effect of television violence on small children. In B.F. Kane

     (Ed.), Television and juvenile psychological development (pp. 112-134). New York: 

     American Psychological Society.

Reprinted or republished books

Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of

     the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp.3-66). London: Hogarth

     Press. (Original work published 1923).

Following the entry, enclose “Original work published” in parentheses, noting the original date.

Citing multivolume works

Wilson, J.G., & Fraser, F. C. (Eds.). (1977-1978). Handbook of teratology (Vols. 1-4). New

     York: Plenum Press.

Citing one book in a series

Cousins, M. (1984). Michel Foucault. Theoretical traditions in the social sciences. New York:

     St. Martin's Press.

The series title should be included immediately following the book title and should not be underlined. Close with a period.

Edited collections

Higgins, J. (Ed.). (1988). Psychology. New York: Norton.
OR

Grice, H.P., & Gregory, R.L. (Eds.). (1968). Early language development. New York:

     McGraw-Hill.

Citing specific editions of a book

Brockett, O. (1987). History of the theatre (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Immediately after the book's title, note the edition information in parentheses (for example, “5th ed.” Or “rev. ed.”). Do not use a period between the title and the parenthetical information.

Review of a book

Schatz, B.R. (2000). Learning by text or context? [Review of the book The social life of

      information]. Science, 290, 1304.

Translated works

Freud, S. (1970). An outline of psychoanalysis. (J. Strachey, Trans.). New York: Norton.

     (Original work published 1940)

The original publication date is the last portion of the entry and should be in parentheses with the note “Original work published” followed by the date. Each portion of the entry should be separated by a period and two spaces.

Citing articles in journals with continuous pagination

Passons, W. (1967). Predictive validities of the ACT, SAT, and high school grades for first

     semester GPA and freshman courses. Educational and Psychological Measurement,

     27, 1143-1144.

Citing articles in journals with non-continuous pagination

Sawyer, J. (1966). Measurement and prediction, clinical and statistical. Psychological

     Bulletin, 66 (3), 17-25.

Citing articles in monthly periodicals

Chander-Crisp, S. (1988, May) Aerobic writing: A writing practice model. Writing Lab

     Newsletter, pp. 9-11.

Citing articles in weekly periodicals

Kauffman, S. (1993, October 18). On films: Class consciousness. The New Republic, p. 30.

Newspaper articles

Monson, M. (1993, September 16). Urbana firm obstacle to office project. The Champaign-

     Urbana News-Gazette, pp. 1, 8.

No author identified

Clinton puts ‘human face' on health-care plan. (1993, September 16). The New York Times,

     p. 1.

Citation of a work discussed in a secondary source

Smith, H.S. (1996). Models of reading aloud. Psychological Review, 100, 588-600.

To cite the above reference within the text of your paper: Hutchinson and Taylor's study (as cited in Smith, 1996) states that...

ERIC Documents – Report available from the Education Resources Information Center

Mead, J.V. (1992). Looking at old photographs: Investigating the teacher tales that novice

     teachers bring with them (Report No. NCRTL—RR-92-4). East Lansing, MI: National

     Center for Research on Teacher Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No

     ED. 346 082).

Other Media

Archer, N. (1993). [Interview with Helen Burns, author of Sense and Perception]. Journal of

     Sensory Studies, 21, 211-216.

In this example, the interview lacks a title, so a description of the interview is given in brackets. If the interview has a title, include the title (without quotation marks) after the year, and then give a further description in brackets if necessary.

(N. Archer, personal interview, October 11, 1993)

Citing films or videotapes

Weir, P.B. (Producer), & Harrison, B.F. (Director). (1992). Levels of consciousness

     [Videotape]. Boston, MA: Filmways.

Electronic Information

The type of medium can be, but is not limited to the following: Internet, CD-ROM, floppy disk, magnetic tapes. Pagination in electronic references is unavailable in many cases; therefore, it is left out of the citation. APA has a section illustrating the format for electronic references on pp. 268-281.

Citing computer software

Arend, D. N. (1993). Choices (Version 4.0) [Computer software]. Champaign, IL: U.S. Army

     Corps of Engineers Research Laboratory.

Full-Text Database (i.e., book, magazine, or newspaper article or report)

The second date which follows is the date the user accessed the material. In some cases an item's database accession number should be included.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1998, March). Encryption: Impact on law enforcement.

     Washington, D.C.: Publisher. Retrieved January 12, 2003, from SIRS database.

Schneiderman, R.A. (1997). Librarians can make sense of the Net. San Antonio Business

    Journal, 11, 58-91. Retrieved January 27, 2002, from EBSCO database.

For other examples, visit http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html. Sometimes authors are not identified, and there is no “last update” showing for the document. Use n.d. (no date) when a publication date is not available. The date the website was accessed should be used and efforts should be made to identify the sponsoring author/organization of the website. If none is found, do not list an author.

National Consumers League. (1997). Helping seniors targeted for telemarketing fraud.

     Retrieved Febuary 2, 1999, from http://www.fraud.org/elderfraud/helpsen.htm

Periodical article

Kawasaki, J.L., & Raven, M.R. (1995). Computer-administered surveys in extension. Journal

     of Extension, 33, 252-255. Retrieved June 2, 1999, from http://joe.org/joe/index.html

E-mail or newsgroup posting

Personal communications are not included in reference lists and therefore should be cited within the text only:

E-mail

F.Smith (personal communication, January 21, 1999)

Newsgroup posting

Jones, G. (2000, November 3). New resources for visual cognition [Msg 13]. Message

     posted to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/visualcognition/message13

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