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Psychology & Counselling: APA referencing

Psychology - APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Association)

The tabs above provide examples of commonly cited sources.
You can also refer to the APA Departmental guide here:

The APA  also provides useful information on APA 7 referencing: apastyle.apa.org/

 

Please see important information on referencing and plagiarism in our Referencing & Plagiarism Awareness Guide.

This style uses an author-date format for the in-text citations and then the full source details are listed A-Z in the reference list.

Examples of In-text citations:
  • As part of the narrative e.g. Adams (2019) argues that...
  • Directly following a phrase e.g. The current guide provides an overview of APA (Adams, 2019).

If you are citing a direct quote, make sure to use "quotation marks" and to include the page number after the year: (Adams, 2019, p. 61).

If you are citing a book or article which has several authors, follow these rules:

2 authors: always cite them both (Polit & Beck, 2017)

3-20 authors: Cite the first authors’ last name followed by et al. (Perry et al., 2020)

 

See the following tabs for advice on creating the reference list.

Creating the reference list:

When referencing a book follow this order:

  • Authors, surnames followed by initials
  • Year of publication, in brackets
  • Title, in italics
  • Edition of book (if not first edition)
  • Publisher
Example: Book, one author:

Reference list:

Smyth, T.R. (2004). The principles of writing in Psychology. Palgrave MacMillan.

When referencing an e-book follow this order:

  • Authors or editors (Eds.), surnames followed by initials.
  • Year of publication, in brackets.
  • Title of book, in italics.
  • Edition (if not the first edition)
  • URL or DOI link
Example: e-book

Loschiavo, J. (2015). Fast Facts for the School Nurse: School Nursing in a Nutshell (2nd ed.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1891/9780826128775

When referencing a book chapter follow this order:

  • Chapter authors, surname first, followed by initials.
  • Year of publication
  • Chapter title
  • In + authors of the whole book (Initials followed by surname), + Eds.
  • Title of the book
  • Pages of chapter
  • Publisher
Example: chapter from a book

Smyth, M. J., & Filipkowski, B.K. (2010). Coping with stress. In D. French, K. Vadhara, A.A. Kaptein, & J. Weinman (Eds.), Health Psychology (pp. 271-283). Blackwell Publishing.

When referencing an article follow this order:

  • Authors, surnames followed by initials.
  • Year of publication, in brackets.
  • Title of the article.
  • Journal title, in italics.
  • Volume of the journal.
  • Issue of the journal, in brackets.
  • Page range of the article.
  • DOI of the article, if available.
Example: Journal article

Beaman, P.C., & Holt, J.N. (2007). Reverberant auditory environments: the effects of multiple echoes on distraction by 'irrelevant' speech. Applied Cognitive psychology, 21(8), 1077-1090. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1315

When referencing a webpage follow this order:

  • Author surname, followed by initials OR name of organisation. Title of webpage if there's no author.
  • Year of publication (in brackets).
  • Title.
  • URL.
Example: webpage

World Health Organisation. (2019). WHO updates global guidance on medicines and diagnostic tests to address health challenges, prioritise highly effective therapeutics, and improve affordable access. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-07-2019-who-updates-global-guidance-on-medicines-and-diagnostic-tests-to-address-health-challenges-prioritize-highly-effective-therapeutics-and-improve-affordable-access

document on the web can include government reports or policy documents. They are referenced differently to a webpage:

  • Authors, including initials.
  • Year of publication, in brackets.
  • Title, in italics.
  • URL.
Example: Document on the web

Howe, C., Mercer, N. (2007). Children's social development, peer interaction and classroom learning. https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/research-survey-2-1b.pdf

Use newspaper articles as a starting point for research. They are not considered academic sources. Use the following format:

  • Author surnames, followed by initials.
  • Year, month and date of publication, in brackets.
  • Title of article.
  • Newspaper title, in italics.
  • Page range OR URL, if an online article.
Example: Newspaper article:

Sisley, D. (2020, Feb 22). Can science cure a broken heart?. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/22/can-science-cure-a-broken-heart

Social media posts, such as Twitter and Facebook, are not considered academic sources. Use them as a starting point and reference to your academic research. Use the following format:

  • Username or group name
  • Date as year, month, day. In brackets. If there's no date put (n.d.)
  • Post title, followed by type of source in [ ] brackets.
  • Retrieved, followed by month, day, year,
  • from URL
Example: Social Media post

Barack Obama. (2009, October 9). Humbled [Facebook update]. Retrieved May, 14, 2020, from http://www.facebook.com/posted.php? 
 id=6815841748&share_id=154954250775&comments=1#s154954250775 

APA 7th Edition apastyle.apa.org/

Online APA referencing support

EndNote

EndNote is a bibliographic reference application for:

  • gathering bibliographic references from online databases and library catalogues
  • amending, managing and storing references
  • formatting the references from a range of citation styles provided, including APA
  • exporting the references as footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies into Microsoft Word documents

APA referencing guides in the Library