APA Basics

APA Basics is a student guide written for the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual. It follows a paper through every stage, from choosing a topic, to finding suitable research and citing and referencing it correctly, to producing a finished paper in current APA style.

The book answers the practical questions students tend to face along the way. How can you widen or narrow a topic? How do the psychology databases PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES differ from each other and from tools such as Google Scholar? How do you write an introduction, from the opening hook to the thesis statement? How do you work from an outline, and how do you build a body that follows logically from the thesis? Examples are drawn from real student papers.

The reference section gives citation and reference examples for the sources you are most likely to use. These include textual sources such as journal articles, books, book chapters and newspapers, audiovisual media such as podcasts, YouTube videos and TED Talks, and online media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and websites with individual or group authors.

The book also contains a complete, heavily annotated A+ student paper on Seasonal Affective Disorder, along with a sample submission for a professional journal. An appendix collects a range of sources for papers on body image, mood and recall, the placebo effect, the treatment of OCD, and the treatment of SAD. The whole book runs under 120 pages, more than 200 pages fewer than the APA's own concise guide.