APA: A Brief Description And Application Of Psychology
About APA
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world 's largest association of psychologists, with more than 134,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.
Our mission is to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people 's lives.
Our Work
APA seeks to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people 's lives. We do this by:
Encouraging the development and application of psychology in the broadest manner.
Promoting research in psychology, the improvement …show more content…
of research methods and conditions and the application of research findings.
Improving the qualifications and usefulness of psychologists by establishing high standards of ethics, conduct, education and achievement.
Increasing and disseminating psychological knowledge through meetings, professional contacts, reports, papers, discussions and publications.
Strategic Plan
Our strategic plan goals are to maximize the association 's organizational effectiveness, expand psychology 's role in advancing health and increase recognition of psychology as a science.
Governance and Senior Staff
Volunteer governance members play a key role in the direction and completion of APA 's advocacy, publishing, member service and more.
These groups include APA 's:
Council of Representatives, which has the sole authority to approve policy and appropriate the association 's revenue.
Board of Directors, elected by the membership, and which acts as the administrative agent of the Council of Representatives.
APA president, elected annually by the membership to serve as the face of the association.
Committees, boards and task forces, which focus on particular issues in the field.
APA 's daily operations are overseen by its senior staff at APA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Definition of "Psychology"
Psychology is a diverse discipline, grounded in science, but with nearly boundless applications in everyday life. Some psychologists do basic research, developing theories and testing them through carefully honed research methods involving observation, experimentation and analysis. Other psychologists apply the discipline’s scientific knowledge to help people, organizations and communities function …show more content…
better.
As psychological research yields new information, whether it’s developing improved interventions to treat depression or studying how humans interact with machines, these findings become part of the discipline’s body of knowledge and are applied in work with patients and clients, in schools, in corporate settings, within the judicial system, even in professional sports.
Psychology is a doctoral-level profession.
Psychologists study both normal and abnormal functioning and treat patients with mental and emotional problems. They also study and encourage behaviors that build wellness and emotional resilience. Today, as the link between mind and body is well-recognized, more and more psychologists are teaming with other health-care providers to provide whole-person health care for patients.
APA History
The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 with 31 members and grew quickly after World War II. Today, APA is the world 's largest association of psychologists, with more than 134,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members. APA also has 54 divisions in subfields of psychology.
APA’s Founding
APA was founded in July 1892 by a small group of men interested in what they called “the new psychology.” The group elected 31 individuals, including themselves, to membership, with G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) as its first president.
APA’s first meeting was held in December 1892 at the University of Pennsylvania. The basic governance of the APA consisted of a council with an executive committee. This structure has continued to the beginning of the twenty-first century: Today, APA has a Council of Representatives with a Board of Directors.
APA’s founding was part of a large number of changes occurring in the United States then,
including:
The emergence of academic disciplines such as psychology, economics, political science, biochemistry and physiology. These new disciplines quickly developed advanced degrees that provided credentials to validate the disciplines’ members as experts.
The progressive movement in politics, which called for a more efficient, less corrupt, social order.
The synergy of these two developments — specialized expertise and rationalized government — helped create the need for trained personnel to fill the new professional niches created by the demands for a more efficient society. Membership growth of the APA was modest over its first 50 years.
1892 - 31 members
1899 - 125 members
1916 - 308 members
1930 - 530 members
1940 - 664 members
However, in 1926 a new class of non-voting membership was formed: associate members. Most of the growth occurred in that class after 1926, so that there were 2,079 associate members in 1940. Many of these associates were individuals doing practical or applied work in psychology, and who also belonged to one of the applied associations that emerged in this time.
World War II and Its Effects
Realizing that the growth of applied psychology represented a potential threat to its preeminence, the leaders of APA reorganized during World War II. Under this reorganization plan APA merged with other psychological organizations resulting in a broader association organized around an increasingly diffuse conceptualization of psychology.
Now the association 's scope included professional practice and the promotion of human welfare as well as the practice of the science of psychology. This flexibility in scope has remained to the present.
Psychology boomed after the end of World War II with the greatest increase in membership coming between 1945 and 1970. Several factors fueled this growth:
Many returning servicemen saw the great need for better psychological services firsthand during the war. There was special interest in the domains of clinical and applied psychology.
The GI Bill, the new Veterans Administration Clinical Psychology training program, and the creation of the National Institute of Mental Health contributed to the increased interest in psychology.
For the first time psychology was a field, in both science and practice, that was richly funded for training and research. This was, as one scholar termed it, The Golden Age of Psychology.
The rapid and incredible growth in APA 's membership reflected these trends as membership grew 630 per ent from 1945 to 1970, from 4,183 to 30,839. By comparison, from 1970 to 2000, APA membership grew to 88,500 with another 70,500 affiliates.
APA Divisions
A new divisional structure grew out of the reorganization plan during World War II and helped facilitate this growth. Now members could join a special interest group within APA and find other like-minded members. This also facilitated the fragmentation of psychology and pushed the field away from any sense of unity that it may have held prior to the war.
Nineteen divisions were approved in 1944, with the two most numerous being clinical and personnel (now counseling). This reflected the sectional structure of the American Association of Applied Psychology (AAAP), which had emerged in 1937 as the chief rival to APA and had been the main reason for the reorganization.
Because the Psychometric Society (Div. 4) decided not to join, and after Div. 11 (Abnormal Psychology and Psychotherapy) merged with Div. 12 (Clinical Psychology), the number of active divisions was reduced to 17.
Growth in the number of divisions was slow until the 1960s. Only three more were added, in part because many of the older members, then in leadership positions, were quite resistant to increasing the number of divisions.
From 1960 to 2007, 34 more divisions were formed bringing the total to 54. Many of the newer divisions reflect the growth of particular practice areas, e.g., Div. 50 (Society of Addiction Psychology). However there has also been growth in special interest areas that belie any simple science/practice dichotomy, such as the Society for the Psychology of Women, Society for the History of Psychology, International Psychology, Media Psychology, or the Society for the Study of Men and Masculinity.
Our Members
APA members are doctoral-level psychologists who work in myriad settings, including academic research, private psychology practice, K-12 schools, hospitals, the armed forces, court systems, prisons, business and industry and the VA. A docotral-level psychologist holds a PhD, PsyD or EdD in psychology from a regionally accredited institution. Individuals who hold a doctorate in a related field from a regionally accredited institution may also join APA as members.
APA affiliate and associate members include psychology students, teachers of psychology and other mental health professionals. They also include psychologists who live outside of the United States and Canada.
Together, they create a rich and diverse membership poised to communicate the unique benefits psychology provides to health and wellness; advocate for the discipline to become more fully incorporated into health research and delivery systems; position psychology as the science of behavior; and increase public awareness of the benefits psychology brings to daily living.
Our Staff
APA 's more than 500 staff members track trends in the field of psychology; create content to educate the public about mental health, behavior and psychology 's scientific basis; publish peer-reviewed journals, books and other products; maintain PsycINFO® and other databases; identify and advocate for key federal policies and legislation; staff APA 's many boards and committees; and strive to provide members with excellent customer service and benefits.
Our Leaders
The American Psychological Association is led by its:
Board of Directors: Oversees the association’s administrative affairs, and, with the assistance of the Finance Committee, presents an annual budget for council approval.
Council of Representatives: A large, diverse legislative body that has sole authority to set policy and appropriate APA 's budget. It is composed of elected members from state/provincial/territorial psychological associations, APA divisions and the APA Board of Directors.
President: Directly elected by the membership, the president chairs both the Council of Representatives and the Board of Directors. During his or her term of office, the president performs such duties as are prescribed in the Bylaws.
Senior Staff: The Executive Management Group sets strategic direction and policy for the APA Central Office.
APA style
American Psychological Association (APA) style is an academic format specified in The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, a style guide that offers academic authors guidance on various subjects for the submission of papers to the publications of APA.[1] The APA states that the guidelines were developed to assist reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and for "word choice that best reduces bias in language".[2][3] The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association contains guidelines on many aspects of academic writing as it is seen appropriate by the APA. Among the topics covered are information on the structure of research papers of various kinds, spelling rules, an author-date reference style, construction of tables and graphs, plagiarism, formatting of papers, and much more.
APA style is widely used, not only by APA publications but by various other scientific journals (including medical and public health journals), textbooks, and academia (for papers written in classes). Along with CMOS, Turabian, AMA, and CSE, it is one of the major style regimes for such work.
Contents
1 Early editions
2 Sixth edition of the Publication Manual
3 Errors in the first printing of the sixth edition
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
Early editions
The Publication Manual was established in 1929 as a seven-page document with a set of procedures to increase the ease of reading comprehension (APA, 2009a, p. xiii).[4] Created under the sponsorship of the United States National Research Council, its originators included psychologists, anthropologists, and publishing professionals.
In 1952, the booklet was expanded and published as a 55-page supplement in Psychological Bulletin with revisions made in 1957 and 1967 (APA, 1952, 1957, 1967).[5][6][7] The first edition covered word choice, grammar, punctuation, formatting, journal publication policies, and "wrapping and shipping" (APA, Council of Editors, 1952, p. 442).
In response to the growing complexities of scientific reporting, subsequent editions were released in 1974, 1983, 1994, and 2001. Primarily known for the simplicity of its reference citation style, the Publication Manual also established standards for language use that had far-reaching effects. Particularly influential were the "Guidelines for Nonsexist Language in APA Journals," first published as a modification to the 1974 edition, which provided practical alternatives to sexist language then in common usage.[8][9] The guidelines for reducing bias in language have been updated over the years and presently provide practical guidance for writing about race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status (APA, 2009, pp. 70–77; see also APA, 2009b).[10]
Sixth edition of the Publication Manual
The sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was released in July 2009 after four years of development. The Publication Manual Revision Task Force of the American Psychological Association established parameters for the revision based on published criticism, user comments, commissioned reviews, and input from psychologists, nurses, librarians, business leaders, publishing professionals, and APA governance groups (APA, 2007a, 2007b).[11][12] To accomplish these revisions, the Task Force appointed working groups of four to nine members in seven areas: Bias-Free Language, Ethics, Graphics, Journal Article Reporting Standards, References, Statistics, and Writing Style (APA, 2009, pp. xvii–xviii).
The APA explained the issuing of a new edition only eight years after the fifth edition by pointing to the increased use of online source or online access to academic journals (6th edition, p. xv). The sixth edition is accompanied by a web presence.
Errors in the first printing of the sixth edition
Despite multiple reviews of the manuscript at the copy-editing and proof-reading stages by senior editors, staff realized, shortly after the manual had gone to press, that the sample papers contained multiple errors. Among the detected errors were:
In 188 style guidelines, two errors were made, and one of these was a punctuation error.
In almost 1,000 examples provided to illustrate those rules, 36 errors were made (roughly half of these occurred in the sample papers, which were subsequently corrected and posted online). Another 10 occurred in the 374 examples that were provided in the reference chapter.
Five clarifications to text were made. These were not errors, but rather clarified and expanded text, for example, adding a second example for both a blog post and a blog comment.
Three pages of nonsignificant typographical errors were corrected. These included such things as changing an em dash to an en dash, changing a minus sign to a hyphen, and correcting for added space that was automatically added when a sample form was reproduced.
In the interest of transparency (and following the same procedure that was followed for the fifth edition), staff posted all of the corrections online in a single document on October 1, 2009, and shortly thereafter alerted users to the existence of the corrections in an APA blog entry.[13] On the same day the corrections were posted, an individual posting to the Educational and Behavioral Sciences Section mailing-list (EBBSS-L) of the American Library Association alerted readers to what she described as the "many" errors in the first printing, and speculated that "some but not all" would be corrected in a second printing. On October 5, 2009, APA staff responded to the note, clarifying that errors were found in the sample papers, that the papers had been corrected and posted online, that the substantive guidance in the manual was correct and accurate as printed, and that a full list of corrections could be found at the APA Style website.[14] Nevertheless, APA refused initially to exchange submitted erroneous books of the first with corrected versions of the second printing.
On October 13, 2009, the article "Correcting a Style Guide" was published in the online newspaper Inside Higher Ed that included interviews with several individuals who defined the errors as "egregious" (Epstein, 2009).[15] The article, along with rumors spread on various mailing-lists, resulted in exaggerated accounts of both the magnitude and the extent of the errors, with some reports on Amazon.com claiming more than 80 pages of errors had occurred. APA responded to the increasing confusion by issuing an apology, and implementing a return/replacement program for purchasers who wished to exchange their first-printing copies for second-printing copies of the Publication Manual. The first-edition copies returned to APA were destroyed. The second and all subsequent printings of the Publication Manual have been fully corrected.
The American Psychological Association (APA) Referencing System
1. In-text citations
Three important pieces of information about the source are included in the body of your text. The surname of the author or authors
The year of publication of the information
The page number (if the information can be located on a particular page).
Citations may be placed at the end of a sentence (before the concluding punctuation) in brackets:
Paraphrase or summary of the source (in your own words)
Encouraging students to memorise facts and rules and then testing their memory has been a consistent criterion of pedagogy (Broudy, 1998, p. 8).
Broudy (1998) explains that memorisation does not result in an ability to solve problems (p.8).
Quotation (exact words from the source)
Broudy (1998) believes that “on the common criteria for schooling, our sample citizen has failed because he cannot replicate the necessary skill or apply the relevant principles” (p. 9).
Example 1
An example of a paragraph using the APA Style is given in Figure 1 below. Note the conventions for acknowledging that the information within the figure (or table or image) is from another source.
However, as Aronowitz and Giroux (1986) point out - and it is an important area of criticism of the notion of resistance - there is the possibility of confusing resistance with all forms of oppositional behaviour, and it is not always a response to domination. As an example of this latter point they refer to the much quoted article by McRobbie (1978) on “Working Class Girls and the Culture of Femininity”. Although McRobbie refers to the girls’ activities which include combing their hair under the desk lids, or carving their boyfriends’ names under their desks as oppositional, Aronowitz and Giroux see it in terms of conformation to sexual conventions which require “developing a sexual, and ultimately successful marriage” (p. 100). Contrary then to such behaviour constituting oppositional tactics, they see it as a form of “sexism that characterised working class life and mass culture in general” (p.105).
Figure 1. Example paragraph showing in-text citations
From Within school walls. (p. 60), by Wolpe, A. (1988), London: Routledge. Copyright 1988 by A. Wolpe.
Example 2
An example of how to incorporate a long quotation (40 words or more) is given in Figure 2. Note that the long quotation is indented at the left margin.
The feminist perspective offers exciting possibilities for us to re-see and reinterpret works of art, as Huffington (1988) demonstrates in her biography of Picasso:
What seemed a life guided by burning passions – for painting, for women, for ideas – seemed a moment later the story of a man unable to love, intent on seduction not in the search for love, not even in the desire to possess, but in a compulsion to destroy. (p.10)
Figure 2. Example paragraph showing long in-text citations
From Writing About Art (p. 10), by H. M. Sayre. (1999). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Copyright 1999 by H. M. Sayre.
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA is the world 's largest association of psychologists, with more than 134,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members.
Our mission is to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people 's lives.
Our Work
APA seeks to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people 's lives. We do this by:
Encouraging the development and application of psychology in the broadest manner.
Promoting research in psychology, the improvement …show more content…
of research methods and conditions and the application of research findings.
Improving the qualifications and usefulness of psychologists by establishing high standards of ethics, conduct, education and achievement.
Increasing and disseminating psychological knowledge through meetings, professional contacts, reports, papers, discussions and publications.
Strategic Plan
Our strategic plan goals are to maximize the association 's organizational effectiveness, expand psychology 's role in advancing health and increase recognition of psychology as a science.
Governance and Senior Staff
Volunteer governance members play a key role in the direction and completion of APA 's advocacy, publishing, member service and more.
These groups include APA 's:
Council of Representatives, which has the sole authority to approve policy and appropriate the association 's revenue.
Board of Directors, elected by the membership, and which acts as the administrative agent of the Council of Representatives.
APA president, elected annually by the membership to serve as the face of the association.
Committees, boards and task forces, which focus on particular issues in the field.
APA 's daily operations are overseen by its senior staff at APA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Definition of "Psychology"
Psychology is a diverse discipline, grounded in science, but with nearly boundless applications in everyday life. Some psychologists do basic research, developing theories and testing them through carefully honed research methods involving observation, experimentation and analysis. Other psychologists apply the discipline’s scientific knowledge to help people, organizations and communities function …show more content…
better.
As psychological research yields new information, whether it’s developing improved interventions to treat depression or studying how humans interact with machines, these findings become part of the discipline’s body of knowledge and are applied in work with patients and clients, in schools, in corporate settings, within the judicial system, even in professional sports.
Psychology is a doctoral-level profession.
Psychologists study both normal and abnormal functioning and treat patients with mental and emotional problems. They also study and encourage behaviors that build wellness and emotional resilience. Today, as the link between mind and body is well-recognized, more and more psychologists are teaming with other health-care providers to provide whole-person health care for patients.
APA History
The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 with 31 members and grew quickly after World War II. Today, APA is the world 's largest association of psychologists, with more than 134,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members. APA also has 54 divisions in subfields of psychology.
APA’s Founding
APA was founded in July 1892 by a small group of men interested in what they called “the new psychology.” The group elected 31 individuals, including themselves, to membership, with G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) as its first president.
APA’s first meeting was held in December 1892 at the University of Pennsylvania. The basic governance of the APA consisted of a council with an executive committee. This structure has continued to the beginning of the twenty-first century: Today, APA has a Council of Representatives with a Board of Directors.
APA’s founding was part of a large number of changes occurring in the United States then,
including:
The emergence of academic disciplines such as psychology, economics, political science, biochemistry and physiology. These new disciplines quickly developed advanced degrees that provided credentials to validate the disciplines’ members as experts.
The progressive movement in politics, which called for a more efficient, less corrupt, social order.
The synergy of these two developments — specialized expertise and rationalized government — helped create the need for trained personnel to fill the new professional niches created by the demands for a more efficient society. Membership growth of the APA was modest over its first 50 years.
1892 - 31 members
1899 - 125 members
1916 - 308 members
1930 - 530 members
1940 - 664 members
However, in 1926 a new class of non-voting membership was formed: associate members. Most of the growth occurred in that class after 1926, so that there were 2,079 associate members in 1940. Many of these associates were individuals doing practical or applied work in psychology, and who also belonged to one of the applied associations that emerged in this time.
World War II and Its Effects
Realizing that the growth of applied psychology represented a potential threat to its preeminence, the leaders of APA reorganized during World War II. Under this reorganization plan APA merged with other psychological organizations resulting in a broader association organized around an increasingly diffuse conceptualization of psychology.
Now the association 's scope included professional practice and the promotion of human welfare as well as the practice of the science of psychology. This flexibility in scope has remained to the present.
Psychology boomed after the end of World War II with the greatest increase in membership coming between 1945 and 1970. Several factors fueled this growth:
Many returning servicemen saw the great need for better psychological services firsthand during the war. There was special interest in the domains of clinical and applied psychology.
The GI Bill, the new Veterans Administration Clinical Psychology training program, and the creation of the National Institute of Mental Health contributed to the increased interest in psychology.
For the first time psychology was a field, in both science and practice, that was richly funded for training and research. This was, as one scholar termed it, The Golden Age of Psychology.
The rapid and incredible growth in APA 's membership reflected these trends as membership grew 630 per ent from 1945 to 1970, from 4,183 to 30,839. By comparison, from 1970 to 2000, APA membership grew to 88,500 with another 70,500 affiliates.
APA Divisions
A new divisional structure grew out of the reorganization plan during World War II and helped facilitate this growth. Now members could join a special interest group within APA and find other like-minded members. This also facilitated the fragmentation of psychology and pushed the field away from any sense of unity that it may have held prior to the war.
Nineteen divisions were approved in 1944, with the two most numerous being clinical and personnel (now counseling). This reflected the sectional structure of the American Association of Applied Psychology (AAAP), which had emerged in 1937 as the chief rival to APA and had been the main reason for the reorganization.
Because the Psychometric Society (Div. 4) decided not to join, and after Div. 11 (Abnormal Psychology and Psychotherapy) merged with Div. 12 (Clinical Psychology), the number of active divisions was reduced to 17.
Growth in the number of divisions was slow until the 1960s. Only three more were added, in part because many of the older members, then in leadership positions, were quite resistant to increasing the number of divisions.
From 1960 to 2007, 34 more divisions were formed bringing the total to 54. Many of the newer divisions reflect the growth of particular practice areas, e.g., Div. 50 (Society of Addiction Psychology). However there has also been growth in special interest areas that belie any simple science/practice dichotomy, such as the Society for the Psychology of Women, Society for the History of Psychology, International Psychology, Media Psychology, or the Society for the Study of Men and Masculinity.
Our Members
APA members are doctoral-level psychologists who work in myriad settings, including academic research, private psychology practice, K-12 schools, hospitals, the armed forces, court systems, prisons, business and industry and the VA. A docotral-level psychologist holds a PhD, PsyD or EdD in psychology from a regionally accredited institution. Individuals who hold a doctorate in a related field from a regionally accredited institution may also join APA as members.
APA affiliate and associate members include psychology students, teachers of psychology and other mental health professionals. They also include psychologists who live outside of the United States and Canada.
Together, they create a rich and diverse membership poised to communicate the unique benefits psychology provides to health and wellness; advocate for the discipline to become more fully incorporated into health research and delivery systems; position psychology as the science of behavior; and increase public awareness of the benefits psychology brings to daily living.
Our Staff
APA 's more than 500 staff members track trends in the field of psychology; create content to educate the public about mental health, behavior and psychology 's scientific basis; publish peer-reviewed journals, books and other products; maintain PsycINFO® and other databases; identify and advocate for key federal policies and legislation; staff APA 's many boards and committees; and strive to provide members with excellent customer service and benefits.
Our Leaders
The American Psychological Association is led by its:
Board of Directors: Oversees the association’s administrative affairs, and, with the assistance of the Finance Committee, presents an annual budget for council approval.
Council of Representatives: A large, diverse legislative body that has sole authority to set policy and appropriate APA 's budget. It is composed of elected members from state/provincial/territorial psychological associations, APA divisions and the APA Board of Directors.
President: Directly elected by the membership, the president chairs both the Council of Representatives and the Board of Directors. During his or her term of office, the president performs such duties as are prescribed in the Bylaws.
Senior Staff: The Executive Management Group sets strategic direction and policy for the APA Central Office.
APA style
American Psychological Association (APA) style is an academic format specified in The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, a style guide that offers academic authors guidance on various subjects for the submission of papers to the publications of APA.[1] The APA states that the guidelines were developed to assist reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and for "word choice that best reduces bias in language".[2][3] The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association contains guidelines on many aspects of academic writing as it is seen appropriate by the APA. Among the topics covered are information on the structure of research papers of various kinds, spelling rules, an author-date reference style, construction of tables and graphs, plagiarism, formatting of papers, and much more.
APA style is widely used, not only by APA publications but by various other scientific journals (including medical and public health journals), textbooks, and academia (for papers written in classes). Along with CMOS, Turabian, AMA, and CSE, it is one of the major style regimes for such work.
Contents
1 Early editions
2 Sixth edition of the Publication Manual
3 Errors in the first printing of the sixth edition
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
Early editions
The Publication Manual was established in 1929 as a seven-page document with a set of procedures to increase the ease of reading comprehension (APA, 2009a, p. xiii).[4] Created under the sponsorship of the United States National Research Council, its originators included psychologists, anthropologists, and publishing professionals.
In 1952, the booklet was expanded and published as a 55-page supplement in Psychological Bulletin with revisions made in 1957 and 1967 (APA, 1952, 1957, 1967).[5][6][7] The first edition covered word choice, grammar, punctuation, formatting, journal publication policies, and "wrapping and shipping" (APA, Council of Editors, 1952, p. 442).
In response to the growing complexities of scientific reporting, subsequent editions were released in 1974, 1983, 1994, and 2001. Primarily known for the simplicity of its reference citation style, the Publication Manual also established standards for language use that had far-reaching effects. Particularly influential were the "Guidelines for Nonsexist Language in APA Journals," first published as a modification to the 1974 edition, which provided practical alternatives to sexist language then in common usage.[8][9] The guidelines for reducing bias in language have been updated over the years and presently provide practical guidance for writing about race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status (APA, 2009, pp. 70–77; see also APA, 2009b).[10]
Sixth edition of the Publication Manual
The sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was released in July 2009 after four years of development. The Publication Manual Revision Task Force of the American Psychological Association established parameters for the revision based on published criticism, user comments, commissioned reviews, and input from psychologists, nurses, librarians, business leaders, publishing professionals, and APA governance groups (APA, 2007a, 2007b).[11][12] To accomplish these revisions, the Task Force appointed working groups of four to nine members in seven areas: Bias-Free Language, Ethics, Graphics, Journal Article Reporting Standards, References, Statistics, and Writing Style (APA, 2009, pp. xvii–xviii).
The APA explained the issuing of a new edition only eight years after the fifth edition by pointing to the increased use of online source or online access to academic journals (6th edition, p. xv). The sixth edition is accompanied by a web presence.
Errors in the first printing of the sixth edition
Despite multiple reviews of the manuscript at the copy-editing and proof-reading stages by senior editors, staff realized, shortly after the manual had gone to press, that the sample papers contained multiple errors. Among the detected errors were:
In 188 style guidelines, two errors were made, and one of these was a punctuation error.
In almost 1,000 examples provided to illustrate those rules, 36 errors were made (roughly half of these occurred in the sample papers, which were subsequently corrected and posted online). Another 10 occurred in the 374 examples that were provided in the reference chapter.
Five clarifications to text were made. These were not errors, but rather clarified and expanded text, for example, adding a second example for both a blog post and a blog comment.
Three pages of nonsignificant typographical errors were corrected. These included such things as changing an em dash to an en dash, changing a minus sign to a hyphen, and correcting for added space that was automatically added when a sample form was reproduced.
In the interest of transparency (and following the same procedure that was followed for the fifth edition), staff posted all of the corrections online in a single document on October 1, 2009, and shortly thereafter alerted users to the existence of the corrections in an APA blog entry.[13] On the same day the corrections were posted, an individual posting to the Educational and Behavioral Sciences Section mailing-list (EBBSS-L) of the American Library Association alerted readers to what she described as the "many" errors in the first printing, and speculated that "some but not all" would be corrected in a second printing. On October 5, 2009, APA staff responded to the note, clarifying that errors were found in the sample papers, that the papers had been corrected and posted online, that the substantive guidance in the manual was correct and accurate as printed, and that a full list of corrections could be found at the APA Style website.[14] Nevertheless, APA refused initially to exchange submitted erroneous books of the first with corrected versions of the second printing.
On October 13, 2009, the article "Correcting a Style Guide" was published in the online newspaper Inside Higher Ed that included interviews with several individuals who defined the errors as "egregious" (Epstein, 2009).[15] The article, along with rumors spread on various mailing-lists, resulted in exaggerated accounts of both the magnitude and the extent of the errors, with some reports on Amazon.com claiming more than 80 pages of errors had occurred. APA responded to the increasing confusion by issuing an apology, and implementing a return/replacement program for purchasers who wished to exchange their first-printing copies for second-printing copies of the Publication Manual. The first-edition copies returned to APA were destroyed. The second and all subsequent printings of the Publication Manual have been fully corrected.
The American Psychological Association (APA) Referencing System
1. In-text citations
Three important pieces of information about the source are included in the body of your text. The surname of the author or authors
The year of publication of the information
The page number (if the information can be located on a particular page).
Citations may be placed at the end of a sentence (before the concluding punctuation) in brackets:
Paraphrase or summary of the source (in your own words)
Encouraging students to memorise facts and rules and then testing their memory has been a consistent criterion of pedagogy (Broudy, 1998, p. 8).
Broudy (1998) explains that memorisation does not result in an ability to solve problems (p.8).
Quotation (exact words from the source)
Broudy (1998) believes that “on the common criteria for schooling, our sample citizen has failed because he cannot replicate the necessary skill or apply the relevant principles” (p. 9).
Example 1
An example of a paragraph using the APA Style is given in Figure 1 below. Note the conventions for acknowledging that the information within the figure (or table or image) is from another source.
However, as Aronowitz and Giroux (1986) point out - and it is an important area of criticism of the notion of resistance - there is the possibility of confusing resistance with all forms of oppositional behaviour, and it is not always a response to domination. As an example of this latter point they refer to the much quoted article by McRobbie (1978) on “Working Class Girls and the Culture of Femininity”. Although McRobbie refers to the girls’ activities which include combing their hair under the desk lids, or carving their boyfriends’ names under their desks as oppositional, Aronowitz and Giroux see it in terms of conformation to sexual conventions which require “developing a sexual, and ultimately successful marriage” (p. 100). Contrary then to such behaviour constituting oppositional tactics, they see it as a form of “sexism that characterised working class life and mass culture in general” (p.105).
Figure 1. Example paragraph showing in-text citations
From Within school walls. (p. 60), by Wolpe, A. (1988), London: Routledge. Copyright 1988 by A. Wolpe.
Example 2
An example of how to incorporate a long quotation (40 words or more) is given in Figure 2. Note that the long quotation is indented at the left margin.
The feminist perspective offers exciting possibilities for us to re-see and reinterpret works of art, as Huffington (1988) demonstrates in her biography of Picasso:
What seemed a life guided by burning passions – for painting, for women, for ideas – seemed a moment later the story of a man unable to love, intent on seduction not in the search for love, not even in the desire to possess, but in a compulsion to destroy. (p.10)
Figure 2. Example paragraph showing long in-text citations
From Writing About Art (p. 10), by H. M. Sayre. (1999). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Copyright 1999 by H. M. Sayre.