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Referencing

Everything you need to know about referencing, bibliographies, copyright and plagiarism

APA (American Psychological Association) referencing style

The APA style of referencing consists of:

  1. in-text citations in the body of the paper that include the author, the date and often a page number
  2. a reference list at the end of the paper giving full bibliographic details of all in-text citations.

This guide provides a number of examples of print and electronic and sources. If you cannot find how to reference your specific source here, you should check out the below links for more information. The important thing is to be consistent – and if in doubt, provide more detail rather than less.

Deak University APA 6 Referencing Guide

Monash University APA 6 Referencing Guide

Victorian University APA 7 Referencing Guide

When referencing books, your reference list needs to include:

  • author's name – surname followed by initial(s)
  • year of publication
  • title, in italics
  • place of publication, usually a city.
  • publisher

In some cases, the editor is provided in the author position followed by (Ed.).

Capitalise only the first letter of the first word of a book title (as well as any proper nouns, acronyms or intialisms). The first letter of the subtitle, if any, is also capitalised.

APA referencing example:

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

 

If an organisation is the author: 

e.g. Australian Psychological Society. (2014). Ethical guidelines: Complementing the APS code of ethics (12th ed.). Melbourne: Author.

 

If no author is provided:

e.g. Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) (2010). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

 

For works other than a first edition, indicate the edition number after the title. Second edition = (2nd ed.), Revised edition = (Rev. ed.)

e.g. Burton, L. J. (2010). An interactive approach to writing essays and research reports in psychology (3rd ed.). Milton, Qld: John Wiley & Sons.

 

If multiple authors please go the Deakin University Referencing APA Style Guide for more information.

When referencing journal articles (print), your reference list needs to include:

  • author's name – surname followed by initial(s)
  • year of publication
  • title of article, in italics
  • Title of journal
  • Volume & issue number
  • Page number(s)

APA referencing example:

Baker, B. C., Buckenmaier, C., Narine, N., Compeggie, M. E., Brand, G. J., & Mongan, P. D. (2007). Battlefield anesthesia: Advances in patient care and pain management. Anesthesiology Clinics, 25(1), 131–134.

Borton, J. L. S., Markowitz, L. J., & Dietrich, J. (2005). Effects of suppressing negative self-referent thoughts on mood and self-esteem. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 172–190.

If multiple authors please go the Deakin University Referencing APA Style Guide for more information.

When referencing journal articles (online), your reference list needs to include:

  • author's name – surname followed by initial(s)
  • year of publication
  • title of article, in italics
  • Title of journal
  • Volume & issue number
  • Page number(s)
  • URL

APA referencing example:

Reed, M. A., & Derryberry, D. (1995). Temperament and attention to positive and negative trait information. Personality and Individual Differences, 18, 135–147. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01918869

If multiple authors please go the Deakin University Referencing APA Style Guide for more information.

When referencing websites, your reference list needs to include:

  • author's name – surname followed by initial(s)
  • year of publication
  • title of webpage, in italics
  • URL

APA referencing example:

Australian Psychological Society. (2014). Communicating about violence, peace and social justice. Retrieved from http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/tip_sheets/
communicating/

APA in-text citations consist of the author's family name and year of publication. In addition, page numbers should be included when quoting directly from a source and you are encouraged to provide page numbers when paraphrasing (rephrasing a short passage). The author, year and page number within parentheses are separated by commas. An in-text citation can go at the beginning, the middle or the end of a sentence.

You can emphasise the author:

Woodward (2010) states that what we buy and how we consume things once we have bought them reveals a great deal about the society we live in.

Or you can emphasise the information:

What we buy and how we consume things once we have bought them reveals a great deal about the society we live in (Woodward, 2010).

 

There are three ways to cite your sources.

General reference
When you are making a general reference to an idea or information contained in a work, page numbers are not necessary.

Hughes et al. (2012) investigated the relationship between personality and the use of Facebook and Twitter for both information and social purposes.

Paraphrase
When paraphrasing (or rephrasing) information, you are encouraged to provide a page reference, but this is not mandatory.

Hughes et al. (2012, p. 567) suggest that this may be because the information sought from Facebook can be obtained socially, whereas the information sought on Twitter is more cognitively based, for example, of an academic or political nature.

Quote
To quote means to reproduce the exact words from a source. Details of the source and the page number(s) must be provided in text.

Short quotes (fewer than 40 words) should be incorporated into the text within double quotation marks.

Hughes, Rowe, Batey and Lee (2012, p. 563) hypothesised that "the short, quick fire nature of Twitter usage determined by the limit of 140 characters per 'tweet' may appeal to those high in Conscientiousness as they can still partake in social networking without it becoming a temporal distraction".

Longer quotes, known as "block quotes" (40 words or more):

  • start on a new line
  • are indented about 5 spaces from the left-hand margin
  • are double spaced
  • do not have quotation marks.

… while others have supported this view:

We don't do burden in the twenty-first century. We do entitlement. We do expectation and our politicians have learnt to give us what we want. In 2008, US presidential candidate Barack Obama caught the American people's imagination with the phrase 'hope you can believe in'. Kennedy sells sacrifice: Obama sells expectation. (Salt, 2011, p. 19)

The sense of entitlement …

Reference list:

At the end of the paper giving the full bibliographic details of the citations used including:

Author, Initials. (year). Source.

Your reference list should: 

  • begin on a new page with centered heading titles 'References'
  • entries arranged alphabetically by family name of first-listed author or name of organisation 
  • If work has no author, list alphabetically from first significant word in the title (i.e. not 'The' or "A/An')
  • use hanging indent style for each new reference 
  • use double spacing 

See below example of a reference list following the APA style.

References

Australian Psychological Society. (2014). Ethical guidelines: Complementing the APS code of ethics (12th ed.). Melbourne: Author.

Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2012). Personality: Classic theories and modern research (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Holder, M. D. (2012). Happiness in children: Measurement, correlates and enhancement of positive subjective well-being. SpringerBriefs in well-being and quality. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-4414-1

Hughes, D. J., Rowe, M., Batey, M., & Lee, A. (2012). A tale of two sites: Twitter vs. Facebook and the personality predictors of social media usage. Computers in Human Behaviour, 28, 561–569. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.11.001

Information sourced and adapted from Deakin University

Icons sourced from Freepik

 

 

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