Research Guides: Nursing: APA Style Help

General Guidelines

Paper Format
From apastyle.apa.org. Brief sections with guidance for: order of pages, title page setup, font, page header, line spacing, margins, paragraph alignment and indentation, headings, sample papers, accessibility of APA style.
Style and Grammar Guidelines
Includes paper formatting details as well as advice on citation, paraphrasing, using bias-free language, and more.
Academic Writer Tutorial: Basics of 7th Edition APA Style
Quickly and easily browse this tutorial from the American Psychological Association to find answers to your APA questions.
APA Style Workshop
Purdue Online Writing Lab. Provides brief basic information about APA Style (7th edition). Follow the links for additional examples.

Samples, Templates, and Instructional Aids

These samples (and several others) are also available as MS Word documents for use as templates. Use the APA style web page link below to access them. Note: APA includes an author credit for each paper included as a sample on this site).

More sample papers (from apastyle.apa.org)
Student samples include: discussion post student paper, literature review student paper, and quantitative study student paper. Professional samples include: literature review professional paper, mixed methods professional paper, qualitative professional paper, quantitative professional paper, and review professional paper.
APA Style Handouts and Guides
A variety of downloadable PDF documents to help with "the seventh edition Publication Manual, Concise Guide to APA Style, and Mastering APA Style Student Workbook. They can be used in homes, classrooms, libraries, or anywhere you are learning or teaching APA Style."
Research Paper Structure: Structuring Research Papers in APA Style
From the Psychology Department at UC San Diego. Useful for understanding the structure of published papers you read, but also provides samples to help you structure your own papers in APA Style.

How do I Write In-Text Citations? (EXAMPLES FROM THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION APA STYLE WEBSITE)

Lesson 16: In-text citations
from Academic Writer Tutorial: Basics of 7th Edition APA Style. Includes a table demonstrating in-text citations.
Parenthetical versus narrative in-text citations
Appropriate level of citation
Basic principles of citation
Citing specific parts of a source
Classroom or intranet sources
Paraphrasing
Personal communications
Plagiarism
Quotations
Quotations from research participants
Secondary sources
From APA Style site: "In scholarly work, a primary source reports original content; a secondary source refers to content first reported in another source."

What type of source do I have?

One of the most challenging things about citing online sources is determining what type of source you have. In order to use the appropriate citation type when you cite, you need to know if the source is an article, a book, a book chapter, or something else. These links describe the identifying characteristics of different types of sources.

Types of Sources
University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Table comparing the characteristics of sources including (but not limited to) articles in scholarly/peer-reviewed/academic journals.
Types of Sources: How do I tell the difference?
University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Shows examples of commonly used sources and highlights characteristics available online that provide clues for what type of source it is.
“I found it online”: Citing online works in APA Style
From the APA Style website: Cite according to the reference or source type instead of by how you retrieved it

Short video (by Mary Poffenroth) that demonstrates the difference between a website and a journal article that is located on the web.

APA Style Reference Guide [PDF]

APA Style, 7th Edition-Reference Guide for Journal Articles, Books, and Edited Book Chapters [PDF]
From the APA Style website, a concise 2-page, downloadable PDF

References - How do I Cite...? (Examples from the American Psychological Association APA Style Website)

Generative AI [How to Cite or Document Use]

A Journal Article [How to Cite-References]

Journal article
Journal article with an article number (but no page numbers)
Journal article with missing information
What to do if any of the following elements are missing: volume number, issue number, page or article number
Monograph as part of a journal issue
Online only supplemental material to a journal article

A Book or an e-book [How to cite-References]

Reports and Grey Literature [How to Cite-References]

Overview of Grey Literature and White Papers (from Kansas State University Libraries)

Report by a government agency
Report with individual authors
Code of ethics
Fact sheet
White paper with group author
From APA Style site: "A white paper is a persuasive document that is written by a person or group to convince readers of their position and philosophy on a topic.Include the description “[White paper]” in square brackets after the title of the white paper."
White paper with individual authors
"A white paper is a persuasive document that is written by a person or group to convince readers of their position and philosophy on a topic.Include the description “[White paper]” in square brackets after the title of the white paper."

Conference Presentations and Proceedings [How to cite-References]

Other Textual Works [How to cite-References]

Audiovisual Media and Online Media

APA Style Guidance for Nursing Students

Nursing Student References
This page contains reference examples for clinical practice for nurses. Many of these examples are presented elsewhere on the APA Style website but are consolidated here for ease of use.

Video by Prof. JusB for APA Style:

Nursing: APA Style Help

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