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Athletic Training
Library Research Guide
How Will This Help Me?
Use APA citation style to:
- Format in-text citations
- to credit other authors' ideas and wording
- lend credibility to your project
- help readers find the original source
- Format the references page
- to indicate to your instructor all sources used in your project
- help readers find the original source
- Fulfill the honor pledge
Using sources effectively and correctly
You can use sources 3 ways in research projects. Be sure to give credit, by using in-text citations, to the source for all of these options.
In-text citations can be in 2 forms:
- Within parentheses after the quotation or paraphrase. For example: Water was found to be the option for rehydration (Singh, 2017). If you are using a direct quotation be sure to include the page number (or paragraph number for websites) of where that quote can be found in the oringal article. The format would be (Singh, 2017, p. 534) or (CDC, 2022, para. 4).
- Within the sentence structure. For example: According to a recent study by Sanchez et al. (2020) the triathlete is three times as likely to suffer from this injury.
Some don'ts:
- Don't use sentences/phrases word-for-word without quotation marks; your instructors know your writing style and can tell if it's not your words.
- Don't just change words to synonyms or change the order of the words; it's still not your idea/concept. Use in-text citations for these.
In-Text Citations
Use in-text citations when borrowing ideas and wording from another source. The basic components are the author(s), the date, and page number(s) if a direct quote.
(Hassan, 2013) OR (Hassan, 2013, p. 263) OR (Hassan, 2013, pp. 261-262)
If your source, most often a web page, doesn't have a page number, use paragraph numbers:
(Hassan, 2013, Making Decisions section, para. 7)
Pay close attention to the number of authors of the articles. There are different rules if there are 1-2 authors or 3 or more authors. Refer to Author/Authors page from the OWL at Purdue University for more information.
References Page
You should include every source that you cite in your project on the references page. Here are the basic formats:
Book: Author, A.A. (year). Title of the book. Publisher.
Journal Article:
Author, A.A., Author, B.B., & Author, C.C. (year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org//xx.xxxxxxxxxxxx
Please note the above citation should have the 2nd line indented in the hanging indent format.
Ask your instructor if a RUNNING HEAD is required. In 2020 (7th ed.) APA removed the need for running heads in student papers.
If your paper will need to have a running head. A detailed explanation can be found on this sample paper.
As with text-based information, always cite the images that you use.
You must cite images even if it comes from the public domain, is licensed by Creative Commons, or falls under fair use. If you create the image, you must still cite it. Further help in determining the fair use of images is available.
Here are some locations that may have images for you to use.
Google Images: after running a search, click on the option for Search tools and from the menu that appears, click on Usage rights. From there you will be able to filter your search results by permitted use.
Wikimedia Commons has free usable images. These still need to be cited and follow the terms the authors indicates.
The in-text citation should be under the image. The citation on the References page should follow the same format as for text resources. Remember to use a hanging indent for the 2nd and subsequent lines, the formatting on this page does not clearly show this feature.
In-text example:
(Lynch & Jaffe, 2006)
References page example:
Lynch, P. J. & Jaffe, C. C. (2006). Concussion mechanics [Image]. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Concussion_mechanics.svg
General format for the References page:
Lastname (of artist), First Initial. Second Initial. (Year or n.d.for no date). Title of the image in italics [Format of item:image,table,photograph,etc.].(address of web site)
Help with APA
These links from the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University can provide help with APA formatting.
- Quoting, Paraphrasing, and SummarizingFrom the OWL at Purdue, this link can help you summarize, paraphrase, and quote effectively.
- General FormatFrom the OWL at Purdue, this page shows how to format your paper, including the title page.
- APA In-Text Citations: The BasicsThis page from the OWL at Purdue explains how to use the author-date system for in-text citations.
- APA Basic Guide for References pageThis guide from the OWL at Purdue can help you format the citations on your References page.
- Avoiding PlagiarismThis resource from the OWL at Purdue can help you understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
