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NU 420: Community and Public Health Resources

What is APA Style?

Introduction to APA Style

APA stands for American Psychological Association. APA Style is a way to format your paper and give credit to your sources. This page provides resources for all the elements of preparing a research paper in APA Style, including formatting, in-text citations, and the list of references.

Many disciplines use APA Style, including business, education, nursing, psychology and others.

APA Quick Links

Paper Formatting Guidelines & Sample Papers

Use the following materials to learn about APA guidelines for different parts of your paper, like the title page, headers and footers, and writing an abstract.

In-Text Citations & The Reference List

Citing sources has two elements: the in-text citation is in the body of your paper when you refer to something that you use from a source, and this citation points to the reference list, where there is more information about each source. 

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab - aka Purdue OWL - is a good online source of information about many citation styles. Many of the following links take you straight to Purdue OWL pages that answer frequent questions about APA Style. 

In-Text Citations

The Reference List

Examples of References & In-Text Citations

Article in an Electronic Journal

Reference page entry

Grady, J.S., Her, M,. Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207-217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

In-Text Citation

(Grady et al., 2019, p. 208)

Newspaper Article

Reference page entry

Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/health/memory-forgetting-psychology.html

In-Text Citation

(Carey, 2019)

Book

Reference page entry

Rabinowitz, F.E (2019). Deepening group psychotherapy with men: Stories and insights for the journey. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/00001132-000

In-Text Citation

(Rabinowitz, 2019)

Chapter of a Book

Reference page entry

Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart. (2019). Culinary arts:  Talent and their developments. In R. F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345-359). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016

In-Text Citation

(Aron et al., 2019)

Webpage on a Website

Reference page entry

National Institute of Mental Health. (2018, July). Anxiety disorders. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/indnex.shtml

In-Text Citation

(National Institute of Mental Health, 2018)

Software Tools for APA Style

There are many tools that can help you create, manage, and organize your citations and your references page. Here are some that the library provides or recommends for students and faculty.