APA Citation Style in Psychological Studies

Every person who engages in academic work needs to be aware of how important the documentation of ideas is. Moreover, it is necessary to keep in mind how to present the ideas of other authors in one’s writing. For such purposes, a variety of citation styles is used, one of which is APA. This citation method allows the reader to identify and locate the sources used in the scholar’s writing. The purpose of in-text citing is to let the audience see the author of the borrowed ideas and the date of publication.

There are two main functions of in-text citation. For one thing, the person who is reading the paper will be able to see which of the author’s ideas belong to him or her and which ones have been borrowed from other scholars. For another thing, the reader who wants to find out more about the cited source will be able to find this book or article and consult it for his or her own purposes.

Here is an example of an in-text citation from the article I summarized: “In their article dedicated to the issue of gender and racial discrimination, Otiniano Verissimo, Gee, and Ford (2014) analyze the connection between discrimination and substance abuse among Latina/os and investigate whether this connection is dependent on discrimination type and gender.” Here are examples of quoted material from the article:

• According to Otiniano Verissimo et al. (2014), “In general, Latina/os tend to be stereotyped as being uneducated, poor, and overly sexualized regardless of gender (e.g., housekeeper, day laborer, Ladn lover, spicy Ladna)” (p. 44);
• It is mentioned that “In the multivariate analyses, racial discrimination was significantly associated with higher odds (OR = 3.94) of drug abuse after adjusting for covariates” (Otiniano Verissimo et al., 2014, p. 46).

Reference

Otiniano Verissimo, A. D., Gee, G. C., & Ford, C. L. (2014). Racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and substance abuse among Latina/os nationwide. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(1),43-51.