APA Style provides guidance on presenting and communicating research for publication and focuses on the following aspects: paper format, grammar, bias free language, tables and figures, in-text citations, references, and research publication.
The American Psychological Association updated their style guidance in October 2019. The 7th edition has been adopted for Psychology courses at ARU for assignment submissions. Follow APA 7th edition instructions for referencing unless told otherwise.
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
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Concise Guide to APA Style
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Reporting Qualitative Research in Psychology
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Reporting Quantitative Research in Psychology
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APA produce brief guidelines for free public access. See the manuals for full guidance and full range of scenarios and examples.
Both of the above links are part of a wider set of free guidance on Style and Grammar available from APA.
Your Subject Librarian can help with questions about referencing using APA 7th Style - please note, this does not include advice on writing or data presentation guidelines for which you should contact academic staff.
Contact the library with general questions. You'll be redirected quickly to the Subject Librarian team if you need help using resources in this guide, finding information sources or referencing,
Need more in-depth help? Book an appointment with your Subject Librarian, Andrea Packwood.
Cite Them Right is an online referencing guide that includes detailed instructions on formatting in-text and full references. It also includes referencing tutorials, and general advice.
Login for off-campus access. Click on 'Login via your institution', search for 'Anglia Ruskin University' and select it. You may be taken to a separate page where you need to login with your long username, e.g. abc123@student.aru.ac.uk, and your University password..
Choose APA 7th on the Welcome screen to see formatting instructions for lots of different referencing types.
Important: You can search for a format (a blog for example) to get information on how to cite and reference it. Choose APA from the left-hand side menu to make sure you get the right advice.
Please note, this resource will help you format your own references for basic APA 7th style but does not contain details of other elements of APA Style such as formatting tables or reporting data. See the APA books on this page for full guidance, including more detailed information on referencing.
Access the APA tutorial from the Tutorials landing page by clicking on Launch tutorials.
Please get in touch if you have a question about APA Referencing.
Contact us by chat, phone, or AskARU for FAQs and email help. Let us know that you are a Psychology student when you contact us to make sure you receive APA specific advice.
Consider booking a small group appointment with fellow students for referencing support. Use the Book A Librarian appointment service for group or individual bookings.
The following pages from the APA are designed to provide basic information on using APA Style and answer some Frequently Asked Questions.
For students returning to Psychology following a gap, the APA website details the new content in the 7th edition of APA Style compared to the previous 6th edition.
APA style requires a hanging indent which means the second line of an individual reference starts 0.5cm to the right of the first line.
To create a hanging indent in Word, use the following steps.
RefWorks is a piece of software available at ARU that you can use to capture, store and organise all your references, regardless of where you found them. It can also help you produce reference lists using APA style. There is also a Word add-in (RefWorks Citation Manager) that you can use to produce in-text citations and automatically generate a reference list from them.
There are several formats of APA 7th style to choose from in RefWorks. Find more advice on our RefWorks guide - specifically, the page on Referencing styles for more information on APA 7th choices.
No reference creation tool is perfect - whatever you use, you must check your references for accuracy and correct formatting - and edit if necessary.