APA Referencing for HE students (SHU)

When you do research, you read other people’s work and may use their ideas in your own assignments. If you do this, you must acknowledge the fact that it is their work or you could be found guilty of plagiarism. When you start taking notes, make sure you are:

• Collecting the correct information about your sources (author, date, title, publisher etc.);

• Considering whether the source is relevant, reliable and credible;

• Checking the author’s words are supported by citations and references;

• Referencing the primary or original sourcewhere possible. For example, look at thereferences your lecturers have provided in class and investigate the original source.

Citation/citing-Using the author(s) surname and year of publication in the text of your assignment to show that the information is not your own.

Reference–the detailed description of the source that has been used (author, date, title, publisher etc.).

Reference List–a list of the full detailed references of each of the sources you have cited. This is presented in alphabetical order of the author’s surname and helps the reader to find each cited source.

Bibliography–the list of all the sources you have consulted in your research. APA generally requires a reference list rather than a bibliography.

Each in-text citation should be accompanied by a full reference in the reference list. If you cite the same source in your work more than once, you still only need to include one full reference at the end.

Sheffield Hallam University have many excellent online support materials and links to their online guide and tutorials can be found below. These include a handy downloadable guide.

When you mention someone else’s idea, theory, viewpoint, or argument you must include a citation in your assignment. You can do this either:

• As a direct quotation e.g. Smith (2007, p. 47) has argued that ...

• As a paraphrase (putting it into your own words) e.g. Quantitative data can be analysed using standard statistical techniques (Kirby, 2008).

Each citation in the text should match to a full reference, containing all the information about the source in the reference list at the end.