APA Style 7th Edition. Short Guide. .pdf

1 APA Style – A short guide to the 7th Edition Liverpool Hope University (LHU) Prepared by Prof. Galina Paramei and Mr. Robert Cunningham in consultation with Assoc. Prof. Rosanna Cousins What is the APA style? The APA style is a convention...

1 APA Style – A short guide to the 7th Edition Liverpool Hope University (LHU) Prepared by Prof. Galina Paramei and Mr. Robert Cunningham in consultation with Assoc. Prof. Rosanna Cousins What is the APA style? The APA style is a convention for writing in the discipline of Psychology adopted by the majority of universities and Psychology journals throughout the world and governed by the American Psychological Association. It sets out a standardised approach for writing and referencing psychological academic works. This guide is based on the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association published in 2020. Below we present a short summary of the APA style guide. For further details you are advised to consult the webpage, in particular, its specific rubrics: https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition Formatting of an academic work All papers should start with a title page, following any guidance provided by tutors. If no guidance is provided, students should include the following: Title of the paper Author’s name Author’s affiliation (i.e. the university attended) Course number and name Tutor’s name Due date, e.g. 6th March 2021 Note that if you informed that your work will be marked anonymously, you should not indicate your name or Hope ID: in Turnitin, your submission login will ensure that your work will be ascribed a unique code. The work author’s details will be hidden until the mark posting date, i.e. after all cohort’s works are marked. Then the code will reveal student’s name and ID. Papers should include a page number, which should be at the top right corner of the page (as is in this guide). The page numbers should continue in that position to the last page of the document. The font type and size are to be consistent throughout the work. Conventionally the font Page is either 12-point Times New Roman, or Formatting of academic work 1 11-point Calibri, or 12-point Arial. Structure of an academic work 2 Format of paper headings 2 The whole paper is to be double-spaced and APA writing style 3 have 1-inch margins on all sides. The text is to In-text citations and quotations 4 be left aligned, with an indent of the first line of Figures and tables 5-6 References and referencing format 7 each paragraph by 0.5 inches, apart from the Format of in-text referencing 8 first paragraph after a (section) heading. References list 9-10 Examples of APA referencing 11-23  2 Structure of an academic work An academic work traditionally has five main sections: Introduction Method Results Discussion References The Method section has always four subsections: Participants, Materials, Procedure and Design (or Data Analysis). Note though that whilst APA style guidelines for research papers usually contain the five sections as is indicated above, the actual headings can vary according to the type of paper (APA, 2019). So, the Introduction could be the section titled Background, and the Participants subsection could be titled Sample (Subjects persists for animal research), etc. Some papers include an additional section, titled Appendices or Supplementary Materials, that contains materials augmenting the content of the main text body. This section can include, e.g. detailed demographic characteristics of participants; a questionnaire used; characteristics and examples or the full array of the employed stimuli; tabular data containing analysis outcomes; supporting graphic illustrations that would overload the main narrative, etc. Format of paper headings https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/headings There are five levels of heading in APA Style. Level 1 is the highest or main level of heading, Level 2 is a subheading of Level 1, Level 3 is a subheading of Level 2, and so on through Levels 4 and 5. The number of headings to use in a paper depends on the length and complexity of the work: use only the number of headings necessary to differentiate distinct sections in your paper. A short student paper may not require any headings. The following table demonstrates how to format headings in APA Style. Level Format 1 Centred, Bold, Title Case Heading Text begins as a new paragraph 2 Flush Left, Bold, Title Case Heading Text begins as a new paragraph 3 Flush Left, Bold Italic, Title Case Heading Text begins as a new paragraph 4 Indented, Bold, Title Case Heading, Ending with a Period. Text begins on the same line and continues as a regular paragraph 5 Indented, Bold Italic, Title Case Heading, Ending with a Period. Text begins on the same line and continues as a regular paragraph  3 APA writing style https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines We insert a concise quotation from this APA webpage: “APA Style provides a foundation for effective scholarly communication because it helps writers present their ideas in a clear, concise, and inclusive manner. When style works best, ideas flow logically, sources are credited appropriately, and papers are organized predictably. People are described using language that affirms their worth and dignity. Authors plan for ethical compliance and report critical details of their research protocol to allow readers to evaluate findings and other researchers to potentially replicate the studies. Tables and figures present information in an engaging, readable manner.” Important in your writing is using language that does not make assumptions of gender or race. For instance, to embrace participants of both sexes, to refer to individual participants you may write “they”, or “s/he”, or “she/he”. Please be particularly mindful of the need to avoid descriptions such as “100 Iranian workers”: one needs to write “100 workers based in Iran” (because the workers could be migrants from anywhere). We also discourage you to use the expression “were used” in relation to participants: human beings are not supposed to be “used” but recruited, tested, investigated etc. We encourage you to write your work in your own words, from start to finish, although, if necessary, quotations can be inserted, if properly referenced. Check spelling, grammar and punctuation: MS Word helps you by highlighting instances of incorrect writing with popping curvy red (spelling, grammar) and blue (punctuation) lines. Also important is to be consistent in using either British English (e.g. behaviour, analyse) or American English (e.g. behavior, analyze) throughout your work. Note that this does not relate to quotations, names of established tests and questionnaires, and references: the spelling in these is to be retained as is in the original. Here you can find sample papers in the APA style: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/sample-papers In this YouTube video you can also see an APA layout of an essay. Note that it is not a substitute for the present, more detailed guidance: https://youtube.com/watch?v=c0e9DKDxUYU&feature=share  4 In-text citations and quotations https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations Proper in-text referencing will help you to avoid accusations of plagiarism – a serious offence against academic integrity that should be avoided at all costs. It is heavily penalised by academic community, in general, and particularly in university students. Plagiarism implies cases when one steals other persons’ intellectual property – passages of others’ work – in an attempt to present it as one’s own work. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to acknowledge the sources one has used in their paper by providing a full and proper reference. You must not copy text verbatim from sources: the good academic practice is to paraphrase the information, that is, to re-write it using your own words and reference it appropriately. APA style uses double quotation marks in various situations. These include when referring to a single letter “R”, or a word in respect to a response (e.g. Students generally answered “Agree”), or when stimuli are presented in text (e.g. the stimulus words were “work”, “play”, “rest”, “sleep”). Note that long lists of stimuli are better presented in a table. Double quotation marks are also used when it is necessary to cite a small passage from others’ work verbatim. In such cases you enclose the words in double quotation marks accompanied by the author(s)’ surname(s), year of publication and, necessarily, the page number. Note that quotations should be used only when absolutely necessary and sparingly. The length of quotations depends on the type of reported research. In academic works reporting empirical studies (surveys, experiments) quotations should be as short as possible. In comparison, in qualitative research reports, quotes are important; sometimes lengthy quotations from participants are essential. In such cases quotations of 20 authors, the first 19 are listed, followed by an ellipsis […] and ended with the final author's name (no ampersand, i.e. “&”, before it). For the latter case see an example below. Jonauskaite, D., Abu-Akel, A., Dael, N., Oberfeld, D., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Al-Rasheed, A. S., Antonietti, J.-P., Bogushevskaya, V., Chamseddine, A., Chkonia, E., Corona, V., Fonseca- Pedrero, E., Griber, Y. A., Grimshaw, G., Hasan, A. A., Havelka, J., Hirnstein, M., Karlsson, B. S., Laurent, E., …, Mohr, C. (2020). Universal patterns in color-emotion associations are further shaped by linguistic and geographic proximity. Psychological Science, 31(10), 1245- 1260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620948810  19 Book Field, A. (2017). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics. 5th ed. Sage. MacDonald, L. W., Biggam, C. P., & Paramei, G. V., Eds. (2018). Progress in colour studies: Cognition, language and beyond. John Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/catalog/z.217  20 Pinel, J. P. J., & Barnes, S. J. (2021). Biopsychology. 11th ed. Pearson. Book chapter Ferguson, N., & Halliday, D. (2020). Collective memory and the legacy of the Troubles: Territoriality, identity and victimhood in Northern Ireland. In J. Vollhardt (Ed.), The social psychology of collective victimhood (pp. 56-74). Oxford University Press.  21 Bourke, L. (2018). Reading, writing and dyslexia. In C. Ó’Siochrú (ed.), Psychology and the study of education: Critical perspectives on developing theories (pp. 48-66). Routledge. Paramei, G. V., D’Orsi, M., & Menegaz, G. (2018). Diatopic variation in the referential meaning of the “Italian blues”. In L. W. MacDonald, C. P. Biggam, & G. V. Paramei (Eds.), Progress in colour studies: Cognition, language and beyond (pp. 83-106). John Benjamins.  22 Website NHS Digital (2021, January 14). Mental health of children and young people in England, 2020: Wave 1 follow up to the 2017 survey. https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and- information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in- england/2020-wave-1-follow-up Alzheimer's Research UK (2021, January 26). Dementia information. http://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/dementia- information/?gclid=CLuDqs7Fir4CFTQQtAodQ1kAgw Repository Paramei, G. V. (2019). Overview of the studies using the Cambridge Colour Test. Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11440791.v3  23 Blogs The format is Author, A. [Screen name if applicable]. (date). Post name [in plain font]. Blog name [italicised]. http://www.xxxxx Please note that if the author(s) name is not given, then use screen name without square brackets. McAdoo, T. (2017, September 20). References versus citations. APA Style Blog. https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2017/09/references-versus-citations.html