Citing Sources

Once you’ve read an article and decided it will work for your purposes, you also need to figure out how to cite and reference it appropriately. Citing others’ work is one of the most important parts of your science communication at this point. Not only is it important because of issues of plagiarism (you MUST acknowledge the ideas of others, and if you’re using their words directly it must be indicated to be a quote), but it also contributes to helping others see the course of the conversation. If you think back to the dinner party example mentioned earlier in this chapter, you can think about how different it is for someone to build on other’s idea by naming them (“I agree with Josh’s thoughts here, but I think building on Abby’s ideas with Akash’s suggestion will get us even better results”) than to simply interject something that builds on others’ ideas without acknowledging them. It’s the same thing in research; tracing the evolution of an idea through different authors and into your own thinking helps everyone understand what’s going on.

APA 7th Edition Format

For many family science research projects, APA 7th Edition is used for citing and referencing sources. You will need to check with your professor (or syllabus) for the exact expectations of the class you’re in. If you’ve been taught to use APA in prior classes, check to see if you were taught in APA 6th or APA 7th. The 7th edition manual was introduced in late 2019. It’s generally preferred that you use 7th both because it’s the current edition and because it’s actually quite a bit simpler and easier to use than 6th. If you’re very confident in APA 6th and want to see the specific changes in 7th, check out “Changes in the 7th Edition” from Purdue OWL (n.d.).

APA Tools

There are a lot of great tools out there to help you cite and reference things correctly, but you have to know what you’re looking for. If you use an automatic tool, like a citation manager or citation machine, you need to know how to proof-read the references and citations it gives you because they are prone to errors (and some can be subtle).

In APA, all sources show up at least twice: one or more times in an in-text citation, and once in the references list at the end.

In-text Citations

The basic premise of APA 7th is that in-text citations should have the last name of the author(s) and the year of the source. If it’s a citation for a direct quote, in-text citations should also include the page number. First, let’s look at an example for a source that is not being quote directly (the words aren’t being used exactly from the source, just the idea is being used).

• In the second demographic transition, there is an expected change to the role of marriage in that marriage became less distinguishable from non-married partnerships as marriages became less permanent and common and unmarried partnerships gain in popularity (Zaidi & Morgan, 2017).

This sentence is using an idea from Zaidi and Morgan, but not using their words directly. It uses a parenthetical citation, meaning a citation that shows up between parenthesis. Narrative citations are another way to show that an idea comes from a certain source, but instead of putting all the source’s information into the parenthesis, the author’s names are actually used as part of the writing. Here’s that line again with a narrative citation instead:

• As Zaidi and Morgan (2017) argue, in the second demographic transition, there is an expected change to the role of marriage in that marriage became less distinguishable from non-married partnerships as marriages became less permanent and common and unmarried partnerships gain in popularity.

If the source had three or more authors, all of their names in any in-text citation; rather, we’d use the first author’s last name and then “et al.” to indicate that it was a multi-authored source (and include all the author names, up to 20, in the reference at the end of the document). For example, if there were a third author on the source cited above:

• (Zaidi et al., 2017)
• Zaidi and colleagues (2017) described…

Quoting a source directly is also an option; sometimes the original source phrases an idea so eloquently that it just wouldn’t do it justice to paraphrase in your own words. However, direct quotes are generally expected to be pretty rare in research writing; whenever possible, APA suggests paraphrasing and summarizing prior research instead of quoting (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Most of the writing should be your own ideas or the ideas of others paraphrased and summarized in your own words. If you do choose to quote directly, however, be sure to set it off with quotation marks (or a block quote for longer quotations, but that’s even more rare) and include a location number (page or paragraph, if the source doesn’t have pages) in the citation. For example, narrative and parenthetical quoted citations would look like:

• As Zaidi and Morgan contend, “These SDT insights into the causes of migration and mortality change have not had the impact of those focusing on family and fertility” (2017, p. 479).
• “These SDT insights into the causes of migration and mortality change have not had the impact of those focusing on family and fertility” (Zaidi & Morgan, 2017, p. 479).

Do Not Plagiarize

Plagiarism can take a few forms, some purposeful and some actually accidental, so even if you mean well and want to give your sources proper attribution you need to be careful that you don’t accidentally copy someone’s words without quoting and citing them.

The best way to avoid issues of plagiarism in your in-text citing is to avoid writing while you have the source open in front of you. If it’s right there and open while you’re writing, it’s really easy to write something that’s much too similar to the original work. Instead, first read, take notes, and read again as much as you need before you write, then close the source and write the information into your paper from your memory. Afterwards, you can (and should) check the accuracy of what you wrote to be sure you’re still representing the ideas correctly, but by getting your memory of the idea down first rather than writing while reading the source, you can avoid much of the risk of accidental plagiarism.

References List

Anything you cite in-text must also have a matching reference at the end of the paper, arranged alphabetically with all the other sources in a “References” page. This reference starts with the author name(s) and date to help readers quickly match an in-text citation to a reference. The reference has the rest of the information the reader needs to assess 1) The type of source (article, book, website), and 2) the information needed to find the source on their own if they wanted to read it directly.

Here’s the reference for the article cited above:

• Zaidi, B., & Morgan, S. P. (2017). The second demographic transition theory: A review and appraisal. Annual Review of Sociology, 43(1), 473-492. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053442

Pay attention to the small details on references, like how punctuation is used, which words are capitalized in article titles and journal titles (the rules are different for the two!), and what gets italicized or not. These little details will make or break your formatting.

You can try this Penn State University Libraries quiz to self-assess your knowledge of APA 7th Edition: APA Style Quiz.

APA 7th Edition Resources 

If you’re looking to learn or refresh knowledge of APA 7th style, you can go straight to the source: the APA website has great information on citing, referencing, and general paper formatting, including a page on Sample Papers. In years past, you’d need to purchase the Style Manual to have access to the authority on APA style. Nowadays, you can still purchase a physical manual if you’d like, but the APA website has everything you need in an easily searchable form!

You will likely find helpful resources through your university’s writing center, tutoring services, or library, so check those out as well. There are also many great resources online, like Purdue Owl and other university’s writing centers. The further you get from the source, however, the more likely their may be errors, so always return to APA’s website when you need to details on a reference format, how to handle odd situations (like 25 authors, or how to reference a dissertation, for example), or just want to confirm you’ve got your punctuation correct.

References

American Psychological Association. (2022). Paraphrases. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/paraphrasing

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). Changes in the 7th edition. Purdue University. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/apa_changes_7th_edition.html