Sample Header 1 Running head: APA STYLE (5TH EDITION ...

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Running head:
APA STYLE (5TH EDITION) SAMPLE PAPER
APA Style Paper (5th Edition) and
Title of 10 to 12 Words
Vincent W. Hevern, SJ, Ph.D.
Le Moyne College

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Abstract
The abstract is a summary of the contents of the paper. It begins on a
new page. It should be a single paragraph (not indented and NOT
justified) of no more than 960 characters, including punctuation and
spaces. Reviews or theoretical articles should use 75 to 100 words and
empirical studies should use 100 to 120 words. All numbers, except those
beginning sentences, are typed as digits. The abstract is accurate,
concise and specific, without abbreviations or acronyms, and
nonevaluative. The abstract summarizes the methods(s) of study,
hypothesis(es), and any empirical results. Conclusions and implications
usually end the abstract.

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APA Style Paper (5th Edition) and
Title of 10 to 12 Words
Manuscripts presented by psychologists for publication generally
follow the guidelines explained in the current Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association (APA, 2001) which is now in its 5th
edition. These guidelines have historically been given the general name
of "APA Style" and differ in very important ways from the style and
formats used by other disciplines, e.g., the Modern Language Association
(MLA) style or the widespread University of Chicago Press style
(Turabian, 1973). This paper will explain the major elements of APA
style and is itself presented in this style to show you what a sample
manuscript should look like. The widespread introduction of personal
computers and the Internet over the last decade has resulted in many
changes in APA style which are reflected in this paper.
APA Style is fairly straight forward in its approach. It
presupposes that the text of the paper or article you have written will
follow a structure of some type. All papers begin with an Introduction
although you should never use the word "Introduction" as a heading or
label. This introductory section should introduce the problem, develop
the background to your study, and then state the purpose and rationale
for the remainder of your report or research (APA, 2001, pp. 15-17).
The structure of theoretical, review, and historical papers will
depend upon what you are writing about. Compared to empirical or
experimental papers (see below), there is no automatic set of sections
which are used in a theoretical, review, or historical paper. However,
as an aid to your thinking, consider the structure of an imaginary

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literature review paper that focuses upon "Treatment Approaches to
Alcoholism." Topics here flow in a logical order and there is an
overarching structure to the paper. Evaluations or presentations of your
opinion(s) are normally reserved for the ending Discussion section of a
paper. Table 1 displays what the structure of a hypothetical literature
review might look like.
In papers which are experimental or empirically-based, the
introductory section is followed by three sections which are labeled:
Method, Results, and Discussion. The Methods section contains a
description of what was done by you as a researcher. It may have
subsections labeled, e.g., participants, the apparatus, the procedure
and so on. The Results section provides an overview of the data gathered
and any statistical analyses of these data. Finally, the Discussion
section follows. Only after you have presented all the objective data in
the past sections should you offer any evaluation or interpretation of
these data in the Discussion section. In this section you should cite
how your results compared with predictions of your original
hypothesis(es) and suggest directions for future research.
Note that psychologists do not cite page numbers in the references
unless a direct quotation is made or attention is being directed to a
particular citation in the literature. It is usual practice to give only
a general reference and allow the readers to consult the references
themselves if they need to examine the item or study more thoroughly.
Psychologists do not provide bibliographies in their papers; these are
called References and only contain materials actually used in the paper
(see the Reference section at the end of this paper). This list of

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sources is never called "Bibliography" or some such title. Psychologists
do not use footnotes except in very rare circumstances. In order to
indicate how references are written, I will make note of several
different types here and direct you to look at how they are formatted in
the accompanying References section: a journal article (Bekerian, 1993),
a book (Cone & Foster, 1993; Mitchell & Larson, 1987), an edited book
(Gibbs & Huang, 1991), and a book chapter in an edited book (Bjork,
1989). A newspaper article ("New drug," 1993) or a magazine article
(Posner, 1993) might be cited by a writer. Check the Publication Manual
(APA, 2001) to examine the 70 separate types of citations that can be
made. The 5th edition of the Manual contains detailed examples of how to
specify legal references as well as how to cite electronic, computerbased
or Internet-derived sources. I have included in the accompanying
Table 2 some examples of what such references look like for several
types of materials.

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References
American Psychological Association. (1991). Publication manual of the
American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Bekerian, D. A. (1993). In search of the typical eyewitness. American
Psychologist, 48, 574-576.
Bjork, R. A. (1989). Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in
human memory. In H. L. Roediger III & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.),
Varieties of memory & consciousness (pp. 309-330). Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Cone, J. D., & Foster, S. L. (1993). Dissertations and theses from start
to finish: Psychology and related fields. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color:
Psychological interventions with minority youth. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Mitchell, T. R., & Larson, J. R., Jr. (1987). People in organizations:
An introduction to organizational behavior (3rd ed.). New York:
McGraw-Hill.
New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993,
July 15). The Washington Post, p. A12.
Posner, M. I. (1993, October 29). Seeing the mind. Science, 262, 673-
674.
Turabian, K. L. (1973). A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and
dissertations (4th ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Table 1
Possible Structure for a Literature Review of "Treatment Approaches to
Alcoholism"
________________________________________________________________________
(Introduction) [This is not written in the text of the paper]
Historical Approaches
A. Moral Treatments
B. Legal Penalties
C. Other Failed Methods
Alcoholics Anonymous: The First 12–Step Method
Current Medical Approaches
A. Treatment of Withdrawal
B. Treatment of Underlying Alcoholism
Hospitalization.
Antabuse and Other Pharmacological Treatments.
Group and Rehabilitative Therapies.
C. The Problem of Controlled Drinking
Discussion of Future Directions in Treatment
________________________________________________________________________

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Table 2
Examples Citation Formats for Selected Types of Electronic and Internetbased
Sources
______________________________________________________________
Internet article based on a print source
Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). Unified psychology
[Electronic version]. American Psychologist, 56, 1069-1079.
If you think the article may have been changed when put online, you
should use this version:
Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). Unified psychology.
American Psychologist, 56, 1069-1079. Retrieved March 6, 2002 from
PsycARTICLES database: http://gateway1.ovid.com:80/ovidweb.cgi
Article from Internet-only journal
Massey, A. & Hevern, V. W. (1996, December/1997, April). Postscript
two: Literature as geodetic survey map. The Qualitative Report,
2(4). Retrieved April 14, 2002 from
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR2-4/massey3.htm
Multipage document, no date
University of Kent at Canterbury, The Centre for Social Anthropology
and Computing. (n.d.). 45 years in the Turkish village, 1949-1994.
Paul Stirling's ethnographic data archives. Retrieved April 14,
2002 from http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/TVillage/notes.html

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Paper presented at a Conference, abstract retrieved from
University web site.
Hevern, V. W. (2000, June). Alterity and self-presentation via the
Web: Dialogical and narrative aspects of identity construction.
Paper presented at the 1 st International Conference on the
Dialogical Self. Abstract retrieved April 14, 2002 from
http://www.socsci.kun.nl/psy/congress2000/papers/hevern.htm