Psychology

The School of Psychology, Sport Science, and Wellbeing use the APA referencing style.

The Library provides a APA referencing handbook and an online APA guide.
Both have the same content so you can use whichever guide you prefer.

Helpful tips are also available on the APA website http://www.apastyle.org 
 

Why should I reference?

Referencing is important in academic writing and an essential part of any of your assignments as it:

• allows you to acknowledge your sources,
• gives academic credibility to your work,
• demonstrates your knowledge of a subject area,
• prevents accusations of plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?

Check out the Plagiarism tutorial

See also the interactive  'Referencing and understanding plagiarism' module on the Skills for Study site here

What should I reference?

You should always reference a source when:

• using a direct quote
• summarising a theory
• discussing someone else's opinion
• using case studies
• quoting statistics or visual data
• but not when stating your own opinion, observation or experience.

If you are unsure use this flowchart to check whether you need to reference (click on the image to enlarge).

Reference management tools can help with the creation of reference lists and in-text citations. There are various tools available but the library has subscriptions to and supports RefWorks and EndNote. More information about these are available here

It is very important that you check any automatically generated references carefully as these can contain errors. So make sure if using tools to automate reference generation that any outputs are checked carefully against the Library's APA handbook or online APA guide.