For Students

Occidental Psychology APA Style Requirements

The American Psychological Association (APA) provides a set of guidelines for writing and formatting academic papers. This APA Style benefits both writers and readers by standardizing and simplifying the way in which information is discussed in texts, particularly research journals.

Within courses, psychology majors are taught the basics of APA style's many rules and are required to follow central guidelines in most of their writing. APA style dictates general aspects of writing (e.g., tone, primary use of 3rd person perspective, order of paper subsections) and very specific formatting rules (e.g., italicizing a book's title or a journal's title and volume number). In particular, Oxy students must use proper format for:

  • the title page (for "manuscript" format)
    be mindful of the spacing and location of title, affiliation, & running head
  • citations within the text:
    direct quotations, use of "and" versus "&", alphabetical ordering for multiple citations in parentheses, use of "et al."
  • citations within the "Reference" page:
    hanging indentation, spacing, format for different types of sources
  • reporting statistical results
  • sections and headings of an empirical paper (e.g., Methods, Results, etc.)

Print Resources
Official APA publications explaining APA style are commercially available through bookstores, online vendors, and the APA website (www.apa.org):

Occidental Resources
Resources outlining specific portions of APA Style emphasized in Occidental psychology courses

Internet Resources
We provide links below to free Internet resources and to a sample paper. Because we cannot guarantee that online resources are up-to-date, however, students should always refer to an official publication when uncertain.