Summary Of Apa Format

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Psychology: APA Format Summary
Psychology Department
Mount Allison University

Revised September 2011

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Psychology: APA Format Summary
APA stands for the “American Psychological Association,” which has a specific format for manuscripts that is published in a Manual called the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association, 6th Edition. It is the standard that is followed by psychologists who are submitting articles for publication to journals. Mount Allison’s Psychology department follows the format outlined in the manual for all written assignments, including essays, lab reports, and correspondence courses. (Many different departments have their own standard format, such as Chicago, or MLA).
This document
Mount Allison, like most other educational institutions, regards plagiarism as a form of academic dishonesty and the penalties for plagiarism can be severe. 1
Plagiarism can occur when you copy a direct quote from an author without citing the source of the quote, when you too closely paraphrase another’s work (even if you cite the source), or when you model your work too closely on the work of another person. The first instance of plagiarism is fairly easy to recognize and avoid: simply be sure to place all direct quotes in quotation marks and cite the author (more on how to cite will follow). Other instances of plagiarism (such as improper paraphrasing) are more difficult to recognize and avoid. The strategy to avoid plagiarism is to 1) place the information in your own words (not the same as paraphrasing); 2) always cite the source of your facts and information; and 3) list your sources in a reference list.

Use your own words. The phrase “use your own words” sounds simple but it is often very challenging for students, especially those in first and second year. Placing the material into
Raw data is not reported in the results section; if necessary, they can be included in an appendix. When reporting inferential statistics, include value of test statistic, degrees of freedom, probability values, and direction of effect. Be sure to clearly identify whether the statistic is in support of your hypothesis (or not in support of – never use the word “prove”).

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Results should be presented in sentence format. For example, “The effect for age was statistically significant, F(4,43) = 3.54, p < .05, η2 = .21. On average, older participants (M =
29.45, SD = 2.14) performed better on the verbal task compared to younger participants (M =
22.45, SD = 1.87). Therefore, the hypothesis that older participants would outperform younger participants on this task was supported. ”
Here is the format for commonly used statistics:
F test: F(4,43) = 3.54, p = .04, η2 = .09 t test: t(68) = 5.29, p = .03, d = .20
Correlation: r(58) = 0.87, p < .01
Chi-square test: X2 (4, N = 90) = 3.51, p = .02
Some things to note when reporting results:
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Numbers are reported to two decimal places. Although this is by convention, some people report to three decimal places. Be consistent throughout your paper.