Nursing Research Resources: General APA Guidelines

The title page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, and the institutional affiliation. Academic papers will also include the course number and name, instructor name, and assignment due date.

Start the title page centered in the upper half of the page.

The title is first, with the content bolded.  It follows standard capitalization rules and is recommended to be less than twelve words. Do not use abbreviations in your title. 

On the next line will be the author name(s) which includes first name, middle initial if available, and last name. Do not include titles or degrees of the author(s). 

The following line is the institutional affiliation, which in our case is Immaculata University. Academic papers will also include the department, such as Psychology and Counseling Department. This is listed prior to the institution name. 

Academic papers will then list the course number and name, professors name (including any titles), and due date. These will be on separate lines. 

Abstracts are not mandatory for student papers. Please consult with your instructor to see if one is required for your assignment. If it is follow these guidelines. 

The abstract will begin on a new page following the title page. This page should include the page header. On the first line of the abstract page, center and bold the word Abstract. 

Beginning on the next line (with no indentation) write a concise summary of your research that includes; research topic, research questions, participants, methods, results, data analysis, and conclusions. This should be no more than 250 words. 

You may also want to list keywords from your paper in your abstract. To do this, indent as you would if you were starting a new paragraph, type Keywords: and then list your keywords. 

Follow the rules for your required assignment for what is needed in the body of the paper. However continue to ensure that the pages have necessary requirements such as the page header on every page and continue with the same font style and size.

Parenthetical citations

Both the author and the date, separated by a comma, appear in parentheses for a parenthetical citation. A parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence.

Narrative citations

The author’s surname appears in running text, and the date appears in parentheses immediately after the author’s name for a narrative citation. The author’s name can be included in the sentence in any place it makes sense.
For both citation types, if you are paraphrasing an idea from another work, you only have to make reference to the author and year of publication in your in-text reference and may omit the page numbers. APA guidelines, however, do encourage including a page range for a summary or paraphrase when it will help the reader find the information in a longer work. 

The last section of the paper is your reference page. Each source you cite in the paper must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text. Your references should begin on a new page after the body of your paper; label this page "References" in bold, centered at the top of the page. All text should be double-spaced just like the rest of your essay.

Some basic rules are:

• Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.
• All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is called hanging indentation.
• For content by the same author, or authors listed in the same order, list the entries in chronological order, from earliest to most recent.

Full Book

For the author names, list last name and first and middle initials. If the book has editors rather than authors, use the abbreviation “(Ed.)” for one editor and the abbreviation “(Eds.)” for multiple editors after the editor names, followed by a period. In the case of multiple editors, include the role once, after all the names.

Use the copyright date shown on the book’s copyright page as the year of publication in the reference, even if the copyright date is different than the release date.

The title is in sentence case. Include any edition information in parentheses after the title, without italics.

List the publisher name. 

Include the DOI at the end if it is provided for an eBook.

Book Chapter

Start out with the authors, which will be the authors of the chapter if they are different than the book authors.

After the publication year, you will write the chapter title followed by a period. This will be followed by the word "In" and the author and or editor(s) of the book, with first and middle initial, followed by last name. If they are editors you will include that abbreviation. Next is the book title which is italicized and then the page numbers of the chapter in parentheses. The page numbers are not italicized. 

Continue as normal with the citation.

Additional book circumstances can be found on the APA website. 

If the database assigns publication numbers to dissertations and theses, include the publication number in parentheses after the title of the dissertation or thesis without italics.

Include the description “Doctoral dissertation” or “Master’s thesis” followed by a comma and the name of the institution that awarded the degree. Place this information in square brackets after the dissertation or thesis title and any publication number.

In the source element of the reference, provide the name of the database, repository, or archive. If the database or archive requires users to log in before they can view the dissertation or thesis, meaning the URL will not work for readers, end the reference with the database name.

When a dissertation or thesis is unpublished, include the description “[Unpublished doctoral dissertation]” or “[Unpublished master’s thesis]” in square brackets after the dissertation or thesis title. This should be followed by the name of the institution that awarded the degree.

This guide only covers the examples that you are most likely to use in an academic paper. Please use the additional resources or contact a librarian if you need help citing other resources, such as audiovisual materials or online resources. 

You may be tempted to use the citation generator that is available on most databases. This is a good starting point, but you need to always double check the citation. Because they are automatically parsed, information may be missing or in the wrong format. 

Take a look at the example above. The automatically generated citation has several issues with the citation in APA style. 

The incorrection citation:

Ferdinand, S. (2022). A case study of high school building-level public school administrators’ perceptions of disciplinary practices for students of color. Immaculata University.

The correct citation:

Surita, F. (2022). A case study of high school building-level public school administrators’ perceptions of disciplinary practices for students of color [Doctoral Dissertation, Immaculata University]. WorldCat Dissertations and Theses. https://immaculatauniversity.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1344437195