APA System

APA Style was first developed 80 years ago by a group of social scientists who wanted to establish sound standards of communication. It is now widely used by the Psychology profession and related disciplines.

Psychology students should use the APA 7th edition for all submissions unless asked to do otherwise by academic staff.

Online guidance on referencing in APA Style can be found on Cite Them Right Online. The site also includes a comprehensive tutorial and general advice on using APA Style. Login with your ARU username and password and choose APA 7th on the Welcome page. Find the format of the source you would like to reference using the browse menus or search bar. If using Search, you will need to choose APA from the left-hand menu to see the relevant instructions.

Full guidelines on all aspects of APA Style are given in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association which is available in the Library. The full APA Style guide covers information on writing style and display of scientific results as well as citation and referencing.

The library holds copies of the manual as well as supporting APA publications which can be found using Library Search.

Further information and links can be found on the Psychology Subject Guide.

Managing your references:

RefWorks is a bibliographic management service accessible via the library website which can help you keep track of your references and create reference lists. RefWorks contains pre-set styles for APA 7th edition. Full details can be found on our RefWorks guide.

Page Last Reviewed: 22nd September 2022.