This guide identifies the basic APA Style reference works and also unofficial web guides and books that provide guidance on writing papers and building bibliographic reference lists in psychology and the behavioral sciences.
Citation management systems help store references, serve as note-taking tools, and can auto-generate citations in a preferred format, including APA style. Please see our Citation Management Tools guide for information on our support for tools such as RefWorks, Zotero, EndNote, and others.
Reporting standards are a way of showing your work. Psychology scholars adhere to reporting standards to help make their research more reproducible. When publishing original research in a journal article, it's important to report the goals, hypotheses, and detailed methods of a study so that others can evaluate the rigor of those methods and try to replicate its findings. Learn more about what should be reported in a journal article using the resources below.
Read these three documents for the full journal article reporting standards for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research.
Kazak, A. E. (2018). Editorial: Journal article reporting standards. American Psychologist, 73(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000263
Appelbaum, M., Cooper, H., Kline, R. B., Mayo-Wilson, E., Nezu, A. M., & Rao, S. M. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for quantitative research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000191
Levitt, H. M., Bamberg, M., Creswell, J. W., Frost, D. M., Josselson, R., & Suárez-Orozco, C. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 26–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000151