brief APA Examples

** NOTE:  YOUR PAPER AND REFERENCE LIST MUST BE DOUBLE-SPACED
[We are just trying to save space in the examples.]

Jump to Major Citation types: 

• Journals
• Books
• Web Resources
  

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) 2001
available in the library:  BF76.7 P83 2001 and BF 76.7.A62 2007

REFERENCE CITATIONS IN TEXT  (see APA manual, pages 207-214)
Citation of an author's work in the text briefly identifies the source and enables readers to
locate the information in the alphabetical reference list at the end of your manuscript. In APA
the surname of the author and the year of publication are inserted in the text at the appropriate point: 

SINGLE AUTHOR

Starr (1994) compared reaction times ... In a recent study of reaction times (Starr, 1994).... 

OR

In a recent study of reaction times, Starr (1994) ....In 1994, Starr compared ....

Within a paragraph, you don't need to repeat the year as long as the reference cannot be confused with other cited studies.

 

MULTIPLE AUTHORS

-- Always cite both names for a work by two authors. 

-- For works with more than two authors and fewer than six authors, cite all authors the first time; in any subsequent citations use the surname of the first author followed by et al. and year if it is the first citation of the reference within a paragraph. Omit year from subsequent citations within a paragraph. 

Karp, Qazi, Hittleman, & Chabrier (1993) found .... 
[first citation]

Karp et al. (1993) found .... 
[subsequent first citation per paragraph]

Karp et al. found .... 
[omit year from subsequent citations after first within paragraph]

-- For works by six or more authors use only the surname of the first author followed by "et al." and the year for the first and subsequent citations. In the reference list, the surnames of the first six authors should be spelled out , followed by "et al.". 

GROUPS AS AUTHORS

The names of groups that serve as authors are usually spelled out each time they appear in a text citation. If the name is long and the abbreviation is familiar, you may abbreviate the name in subsequent citations.

National Institute of Mental Health. (1999) 
[entry in reference list]

(National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 1999) 
[first text citation]

(NIMH, 1999) 
[subsequent text citations]

WORKS WITH NO AUTHOR OR WITH AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR

When a work has no author, cite the first two or three words of the reference list entry (usually the title) and the year. Use double quotation marks around the title of an article or chapter and italicize the title of a periodical or book: 

... study discusses nurse suicide ("Don't Blame Smoking," 1993) .... 

... in the book College Bound Seniors (1979) .... 

When a work's author is listed as "Anonymous", use that name in the reference list and the text citations:

           (Anonymous, 1998)

OTHER EXAMPLES

R. D. Luce (1959) and P. A. Luce (1986) also found ....
[authors with the same surname]

Past research (Gogel, 1984, 1990, in press) .... 
[two or more works by the same author]Several studies (Balda, 1980; Kamil, 1988; Pepperberg & Funk, 1990) 
[works by different authors are listed in the same parentheses in alphabetical order]

(Shimamura, 1989, chap. 3) or  (Cheek & Buss, 1981, p. 332) 
[specific part of a source]

--   Arrange entries in alphabetical order by the surname of the first author. Use your word processor to create "hanging indents" for each reference, or for the entire list at one time.

--  Order for several works by the same first author: 

1. Single-author entries precede multiple-author entries beginning with the same surname. 

2. References with the same first author and different second or third authors are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the second author, etc. 

3. References with the same authors in the same order are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first. 

4. Works by different authors with the same surname are arranged alphabetically by the first initial. 

 5. Works of corporate authors are arranged by the name of corporate body. 

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Keltner, N.L. (1994). Tacrine, a pharmacological approach to Alzheimer's disease. Journal
       of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 32(3), 37-39.
          [Single author]

McEwen, J.E., & Reilly, P.R. (1994). A review of state legislation on DNA forensic data banking.
         American Journal of Human Genetics, 54(6), 941-958.
          [Two authors]

Espresso maker's wrist. (1990). Western Journal of Medicine, 152(6), 721-722.
         [No author]

Tukeva, T.A., Salmi, H., Poutanen, V.P., Karjalainen, P.T., Hytinantti, T., Paavonen, J., et al.
           (2001). Fetal shoulder measurements by fast and ultrafast MRI techniques.
            Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging,13(6), 938-942.
           [More than six authors]

MAGAZINE/NEWSLETTER ARTICLES

Samuelson, R.J. (1993, October 4). Health care: How we got into this mess. Newsweek,                           122, 30-32, 34-35.

Thigh cream marketers smear it on thick. (1994, February). Tufts University Diet and                                         Nutrition Letter, 11, 3-6.

  [Give the date shown on the publication – month for monthlies or month and day for weeklies.  Give the volume number.]

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993, July 15).  The
    Washington Post, p. A12.

    [Precede page numbers for newspaper articles with “p.” or “pp.” If an article appears on discontinuous pages, give all page numbers, separating the numbers with a comma.]

BOOKS

Shapiro, B.A., Peruzzi, W.T., & Kozelowsi-Templin, R. (1994). Clinical application of blood gases                 (5^th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby-Year Book.

American Psychiatric Association. (2000).  Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders:                      DSM-IV-TR (4^th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

[In text cite the full name of the association and the name of the manual the first time; thereafter, you may refer to is as DSM-IV-TR (2000).]

Karp, R.J., Qazi, Q., Hittleman, J., & Chabrier, L. (993).  Fetal alcohol syndrome. In R.J. Karp
      (Ed.), Malnourished children in the United States: Caught in the cycle of poverty
      (pp. 101-108). New York: Springer.

[Chapter in an edited book. For state location of publishers, use U.S. Postal Service abbreviations except for cities that are well known for publishing – see list on p. 218 of the manual.  Give the publisher name in as brief a form as is intelligible, omitting terms such as “Publishers”, “Co.”, or “Inc.”]

ANNUAL VOLUMES AND CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Turner, J.G. (1993).  AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes, and risk for HIV infection among
     nurses. Annual Review of Nursing Research, 11, 205-224.

[Treat series that have regular publication dates and titles as periodicals, not books.]

Anderson, D.G. (1994).  Homeless women: Their perceptions of their families of origin.                                   Communicating nursing research: Vol. 27. Research, practice, and education within
       the health care agenda (pp. 79-86). Boulder, CO: Western Institute of Nursing.

[If the subtitle changes in series published regularly, treat the series as a book or chapter in an edited book.]

BROCHURES

National Hemophilia Foundation. (1989). Summer camp for boys with hemophilia                           [Brochure]. New York: Author.

[Format references to brochures in the same way as those to entire books.  In brackets, identify the publication as a brochure.]

WEB RESOURCES

Reference to pages from the World Wide Web follow the same basic format as for print materials, modified to indicate the internet retrieval information. No physical location for the publishing or hosting institution is given. See the APA website for more information. 
[Our examples include live web links; your paper will not.]

U.S. Census Bureau. (1999). State population estimates and demographic components of                                population change: July 1, 1998 to July 1, 1999. Retrieved August 29, 2000, from
       http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/state/st-99-1.txt

World Health Organization. (1996, March). Cholera fact sheet (Fact sheet No. 107). Retrieved
      January 27, 1997, from http://www.who.ch/programmes/emc/cholera/cholera.htm

National Cancer Institute. (n.d.). Clearing the air: How to quit smoking … and quit for
        keeps. Retrieved August 27, 1998, from
      http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_Pub_Interface/Clearing_the_Air/clearing.html

Paster, Z. (2007). Medical alternatives aren't foreign to Zorba. Retrieved August 17, 2007, from                               the Wisconsin Public Radio Website: http://www.wpr.org/Zorba/article_alterna.htm

[When the author is markedly different from the provider, explicitly identify the latter in the retrieval statement.]

CITATION OF A WORK DISCUSSED IN A SECONDARY SOURCE
[e.g., a study by Sobralske cited in Hatton]

Hatton, D.C. (1994).  Health perceptions among older urban American Indians. Western                                      Journal  of Nursing Research,16(4), 392-403.

• Give the secondary source in the reference list; in text, name the original work, and give a citation for the secondary source.  For example, if Sobralske’s work is cited in Hatton and you did not read Sobralske’s original, list the Hatton article in the References.  In the text, use the following citation:

         Sobralske’s study (as cited in Hatton, 1994) …

PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS

Personal communications (e.g., discussions, lectures, letters, memos, telephone conversations, and the like) do not provide recoverable data. Therefore they are not included in the reference list. Cite personal communications in text only. Give the initials as well as the surname of the communicator, and provide as exact a date as possible: 

K. Miller (personal communication, May 3, 2007)…

… (K. Miller, personal communication, May 3, 2007).

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