APA format term paper

Published by Charlie Davidson on 03/12/2021

APA format term paper

What is a Term Paper Created in the APA Format?

No one is allowed to write academic papers haphazardly at the inner self’s own will. Styles of documentation are long established and authorized by professional societies and journals to regularize the citing of sources in each field. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) provides guidelines for writers of research papers in the social sciences. The APA Format recommends short references documented within the text (internal or parenthetical citation) and a complete list of sources (references) at the end of the paper. APA research papers submitted for publication require an abstract (120-150 words long), which is a short, comprehensive summary of the paper; yet many undergraduate papers will use an outline instead.

Step-By-Step Writing Procedure

An APA Format Term Paper normally includes the following parts:

The introduction states the question you propose to answer and explains how the methods of psychology can help you find and interpret the data needed to answer this question.
The methods section of a paper indicates how you gathered the data for your study (the characteristics of the studied group; methods of observation, interview, questionnaire; printed sources consultation) for other researchers in order to repeat your study and test its results.
The results section puts the raw data you have gathered into clearly organized form: paragraphs, tabulated listings, illustrations or graphs.
The discussion section interprets the results of the study and explains its significance for an understanding of the topic as a whole.
The conclusion briefly summarizes the main points of the study.

While writing a term paper, you are to stick to the following APA Format requirements:

How to cite:

A citation in the text includes the author’s last name and the publication date separated by a comma and placed as close to the identified information as possible. In case you use the author’s name or the date in a sentence, do not put them in parentheses.
How to list:
- a book. There are four main divisions in the entry, separated by periods: the author’s last name, comma, initials; year of publication in the parenthesis; the underlined title; the publishing data (city of publication, colon, name of publisher).
- an article. There are four main divisions in the entry, separated by periods: the author’s last name, comma, initials; year and month of publication in the parenthesis separated by a comma; the title of the article; the underlined title of the periodical, comma, page.
How to create References List:

References List is an alphabetical list of all the used sources arranged by the authors’ last names, done on a separate page at the end of the paper. Sources are not numbered; books are not separated from periodicals. The first line of each entry starts at the left margin; within each entry all the other lines are indented tree spaces; within entries and between them there are double spaces.