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Referencing

APA Referencing

APA (American Psychological Association) is an author/date referencing style that is commonly used in the RCSI School of Nursing.

  • It consists of two main elements:​

Citations: Source material must be documented in the body of the text (paper/project) by citing the author(s) and date(s) of the sources.

References: appear listed at the end of the essay/dissertation giving complete details of all the works referenced in the text.

Example of in text citations:

If the author's surname is part of the sentence you only put the date in brackets: (Date of publication)

In a study by Smith (1997) coping with illness was investigated... or According to Smith (1997) coping with illness...
 

If the author's surname is not part of the sentence you put the author's surname and date in brackets: (Name, Date or publication)

The skills and expertise required to reflect effectively are often misunderstood and are poorly developed (Johns, 2002).

When you have more than two authors of one article or book, use et al. (et al. with a full stop after al)

Traynor, Boland, Buus (2010) identify the implications for practice... [Use as first citation in text.]

Traynor et al. (2010) identify the implications for practice... [Use as subsequent citation thereafter.]

Another approach

Additional implications for practice  have been identified... (Traynor et al., 2010)... [et al. followed by comma and year]

References (at end of paper)

Arrange entries in alphabetical order by the surname of the first author followed by initials of the author’s given name.

 

Tutorial on APA Referencing

Referencing Common Sources

1. Printed book

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Publishers

Reference

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.                                     

2. Electronic book

Reference elements                  

Author / Year of Publication  / Book title / Edition / Publisher / URL or DOI (if available)
Reference Jackson, L. M. (2019). The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000  

3. Chapter of an edited book
Reference elements                 

Author / Year / Title of Chapter / Editor / Title of book / Page numbers / Publishers / DOI or URL (if available) 
Reference

Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart, T. (2019). Culinary arts: Talent and their development. In R. F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345–359). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016


 

Reference elements Author / Year / Article title / Journal Name  / Volume (Issue) / Page Numbers / DOI or URL (if available)
Reference 

Pope, J. P., & Wall, H. (2025). Is the goal intrinsic or extrinsic? Examining self-determination theory researchers’ and the general publics’ perceptions of exercise goals. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 57(3), 239–248. https://doi.org/10.1037/cbs0000411

 

Reference examples

Reference elements Author / Year / Title / Report No. / Publisher / DOI or URL (if available)
Corporate author, government report

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf
Corporate, task force report filed online American Psychological Association, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html 
Authored report, from nongovernmental organization

Stuster, J., Adolf, J., Byrne, V., & Greene, M. (2018). Human exploration of Mars: Preliminary lists of crew tasks (Report No. NASA/CR-2018-220043). NASA. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20190001401.pdf

From an Institutional Repository

Reference elements  Author / Year / Title / Form of Work / University / URL or DOI (if available)
Reference 

Zambrano-Vazquez, L. (2016). The interaction of state and trait worry on response monitoring in those with worry and obsessive-compulsive symptoms [Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona]. UA Campus Repository. https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/620615

 

Reference elements Author or Owner of the Image / Year / Title [type of image] / Image Host / URL
Reference 

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). Lava [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

 

1. From a Book

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Publishers 

Reference

Rasmussen, E. J. (2009). Employment relations in New Zealand (2nd ed.). Pearson

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Figure 1,...

 

2. From an Article

Reference elements

Author / Year / Article Title / Journal Title / Issue / Volume / Pages

Reference

Jahan, N., & Rahman, S. (2016). Factors that obstruct tourism development in Bangladesh. CLEAR International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management, 7(9), 48–55.                                                

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Figure 1,...

 

 

3. From a Database

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Type of Publication / Database

Reference

EconData. (2019). Hong Kong: visitor arrivals Jan 1996–Jul 2019 [Graph]. EMED Emerging Asia database.

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Figure 1,...

 

4. From a Website

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Website URL

Reference

Department of Conservation. (n.d.). Sirocco the kākāpō conservation superstar. https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature_kakapo/sirocco                                                  

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Figure 1,...

 

1. From a Book

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Publishers 

Reference

Rasmussen, E. J. (2009). Employment relations in New Zealand (2nd ed.). Pearson.

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Table 1,...

 

2. From an Article

Reference elements

Author / Year / Article Title / Journal Title / Issue / Volume / Pages / DOI

Reference

Kim, M., Sudhir, K., Uetake, K., & Canales, R. (2019). When salespeople manage customer relationships: Multidimensional incentives and private information. Journal of Marketing Research, 56(5), 749–766. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243719847661                                            

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Table 1,...

 

 

3. From a Database

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Type of Publication / Database

Reference

Roy Morgan New Zealand. (2015). Percentage of men and women who have bought fruit and vegetable products in the last four weeks, April- December, 2015 [Table]. Roy Morgan Single Source New Zealand.

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Table 1,...

 

4. From a Website

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Type of Publication / Website URL

Reference

Statistics New Zealand. (2016). Percentage of New Zealand population who have never worked, June 2016 quarter [Table].  http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/employment_and_unemployment/people-never-worked.aspx                                      

In text citation: 

This is clearly indicated in Table 1,...

1. Lecture Notes

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Type of Publication / Platform / URL 

Reference

Mpofu, C. (2019). HEAL504 Lifespan Development and Communication: Adolescence/teens [Course notes]. Moodle. https://vle.rcsi.com/course/view.php?id=666

 

2. PowerPoint Slides

Reference elements

Author / Year / Title / Type of Publication / Platform / URL 

Reference

Mpofu, C. (2019). HEAL504 Lifespan Development and Communication: Adolescence/teens [PowerPoint slides]. Moodle. https://vle.rcsi.com/course/view.php?id=666

 

 

Reference elements

Author of AI tool / Year of tool release / Title of the tool (version) / Type of Publication / Description / URL 

Reference

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

In-text citation examples:

1.

OpenAI (2023) generated the following response when... 

 

2.

...that indicates a limitation of the software (OpenAI, 2023). 

RCSI Printable Guide: APA Referencing

Additional Resources

This guide is based on the following source:

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). (2009). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 

The 7th Edition is available in York St and Beaumont Libraries - search the Primo Library Catalogue and select the Books and E-books option.

The APA provides an online guide to the 7th edition which includes a list of over 100 reference examples in the APA style.