REFERENCING GUIDE

1. Introduction
In writing essays and practical reports in psychology you will need to be able to use
references effectively. Using references poorly may affect your grade when your work in
psychology is assessed — yet it is remarkably easy for you to avoid making basic errors if
you follow the straightforward advice that follows. Where material isn’t properly referenced,
you may also open yourself up to the charge of plagiarism; that is, of trying to pass off
someone else’s work (material, findings, ideas, etc.) as your own. To guard against that, you
must be meticulous in attributing the material you describe to its rightful source. This guide is
intended to help you to refer to and list your sources in a consistent and acceptable format.
You are strongly recommended to print off a copy and consult it every time you have to
produce coursework for Psychology.

In this guide we try to cover and give examples of most of the common types of referencing
that you will need for essays and practical reports. Occasionally you will wish to reference
from more unusual sources, and for these you should consult the Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association (copies can be found in the library, shelf reference:
808.066/AME).

There are two aspects to referring to the work of others. Firstly, there is the reference or
citation, which appears in the main body of your essay or practical report right after you
quote or paraphrase material that you’ve gleaned from others. Secondly, there is the
references section that appears at the end of the essay or report (but before any appendices)
where you give a full description of the source. We’ll deal with each of these separately since
slightly different rules apply.

2. Citing references in the main body of your essay or practical report

You must substantiate all actual assertions that you make. This ranges from accurately
describing the specific findings of any particular study through to summarising our general
understanding of some aspect of psychology. The way in which we substantiate the claims
we make (if they are based on our reading of the literature) is by citing a reference, that is,
noting our source, which the reader can then look up to check that the claim is accurately
described, and that it follows logically from what the authors did and / or found.

At the same time, however, we do not want to interrupt the flow of our writing more than we
have to, and so citations should include the minimal amount of information needed to be able
to locate the full reference in the references section. This crucial point is worth repeating:
references in the text should only give enough information to allow your reader to flick to
your references list and be able to recognise which of the references listed there that you were
talking about. Typically, this means that we need the author’s name, and (since very often we
will find ourselves citing different works by the same author) the year in which the work was
published.
(i) Citing single authors
There are only two ways in which the author and date of a reference can be legitimately
referred to. Either we can refer to the author as part of the sentence

Smith (1997) found that memory for cold-associated words was better in cold
conditions…

Or we can refer to the author indirectly (note that the reference is included before the full stop
at the end of the sentence)

Memory for cold-associated words has been found to be better in cold conditions (Smith,
1997).

(ii) Citing work with two authors

Where your source was written by two authors, always include them both in your citation.

Smith and Jones (1995) found that scores on a test of creative thinking were found to
vary, depending on the type of creativity measured

Scores on a test of creative thinking were found to vary, depending on the type of
creativity measured (Smith & Jones, 1995).

Note that ‘and’ is replaced by the ampersand sign (‘&’) when the authors are given in
brackets

(iii) Citing work with three, four or five authors

It would be tedious and rather a waste of space (particularly in assignments with a word limit)
to continually list everyone where a book or paper has three, four or five authors. In such
cases, you should list all authors on the first citation of their work and then use the first
author and ‘et al.’ for the subsequent citations. Et al. is short for the Latin et alii, et aliaie or et
alia, and means, respectively, ‘and other men’, ‘and other women’, and ‘and other things’.

So on first mention we would write:

Brown, Green and White (1990) found that children were more vigilant when their
parent exited the room on an errand, leaving the child alone with a stranger.

Children were more vigilant when their parent exited the room on an errand, leaving the
child alone with a stranger (Brown, Green & White, 1990).

And on further citations:

Brown et al. (1990) also found that once the parent returned, children remained more
vigilant for a short time before recovering to their previous level.

Note that in talks or other presentations, one should not pronounce ‘et al.’ but rather should
translate it as ‘and others’ or ‘and co-workers’, etc. as appropriate.
(iv) Citing work with six or more authors
Occasionally published work is credited to a team of co-workers that can consist of as many
as six or more people (particularly in medical research). Here the citation in your essay or
practical report would be so long as to be distracting, so you should cite only the name of the
first author and ‘et al.’ in the text, even on the first mention.

Adam et al. (1978) analysed the entire body of data on the role of dopamine in
schizophrenia.

(iv) Citing more than one work at the same time

At times you may wish to cite more than one source when summarising a topic or presenting
a claim, for example to show that there is widespread evidence or that there is some
consensus of view. When citing more than one work at the same time, all of the citations
should be included together within one set of brackets, with each author / team separated by
semi-colons. They should appear in the same order as they appear in your reference list, that
is, they should be arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically, and should follow the
ordering rules given in section 3 of this guide.

A number of researchers have concluded that dopamine plays a key role in the
occurrence of schizophrenia and that psychopharmacological treatments are most likely
to remedy the condition (Adam et al., 1978; Peters & Lee, 1977, 1979; Streisand, 1980).

(v) Quoting from sources

Quotations tend to be overused by undergraduates, perhaps partly in an effort to avoid close
paraphrasing that might be construed as plagiarism (or perhaps because it can sometimes
seem as if the authors have said what they did in the most elegant and succinct way, which
would be impossible for us to do justice to in our own words). However, it is your
understanding and writing that we’re interested in here, and in fact you will find that in
published work (textbooks excepted) verbatim quotations are used very sparingly indeed.
You are allowed to paraphrase someone else’s work so long as you are explicit that your
account is drawn from theirs, which can be achieved by simply using the citation formats
given above.

However, there may be a few occasions when direct quotations are necessary. These can
include, for example, when an author is offering definitions of key terms, when an author
makes an unusual or controversial claim, when you want to debate some aspect of the
specific wording they used or interpretation they offered, or where an author gives an
especially insightful description of a phenomenon or case. In such situations you can quote
verbatim, but must ensure that your reader is able to check on the accuracy of your quotation.
You must, therefore, include a page reference with a direct quote

A useful definition of telepathy is that it involves “information exchanged between

two or more minds, without the use of the ordinary senses” (Radin, 1997, p. 14).

Longer quotations (of 40 or more words) should not be given quotation marks, but should
instead be indented about ½ inch (1.3cm or 5 spaces) from the left margin. They should end
with the author, date, and page(s) given in brackets as above.
(vi) Secondary referencing:
If you did not read the original source but rather a second-hand account or summary by
someone else, then this is a secondary reference. In the text you should make clear that your
description is based on someone else’s account as follow.

Grab and Snatch (1984, as cited in Smith & Jones, 1995, p. 63) determined that the
increase in adrenaline produced during armed robbery…

[Note: depending on how much Smith & Jones have to say about the Grab & Snatch study,
you may want to refer to a section (e.g., pp. 63-65 or Chapter 4) rather than to an individual
page.]

Only the details of the source book that you did refer to (Smith & Jones in the above case) are
given in the Reference section. The secondary source author(s) will have referenced the
details of the original work by Grab and Snatch and your reader will, therefore, be able to
trace it back should they wish to.

3. Listing references in the reference section

Firstly note that a references section is not the same as a bibliography. Bibliographies direct
the reader to further sources of information, and can include material the author read but
didn’t cite, and further (perhaps more advanced) reading that might build on the current work.
Neither of these is relevant to nor appropriate for Psychology students’ work that is handed
in for assessment. A references section is restricted to listing only that work which has been
cited in the main body of your essay or practical report. It is comprehensive in that it lists all
work that has been cited.

A references section is intended to allow your reader to follow up on the material drawn from
other authors that you’ve described in your essay or report, perhaps to check on your account
of their work or perhaps because you described work that they were unfamiliar with and they
want to find out more. As such, your references need to be sufficiently detailed to allow your
reader to locate the article or book. The information you are asked to provide here may seem
arcane but is exactly the kind of information a librarian would need if they are to obtain the
correct paper or book chapter. The formatting follows particular conventions so as to
highlight key information. The Publication Manual of the APA devotes 66 pages (pp. 215-
281) to these conventions, but we can summarise the key features over the following few
pages.

(i) Format for book references

Book references should emphasise the title by italicising it. The title should be given in
sentence case, that is, with the first letter of the first word in upper case and the rest in lower
case unless it’s a proper name. Where a book has a title and a subtitle, separate these with a
colon and begin the subtitle with a capital letter too. Include the place of publication and the
name of the publisher.
Gross, R. (2001). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. London: Hodder
and Stoughton.
Harris, P. (2000). Designing and reporting experiments in psychology. Buckingham:
Open University Press.
Hogg, M. A., & Vaughan, G. M. (2002). Social psychology. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Note that it is acceptable for the book title to be underlined rather than in italics, though this
is more appropriate for manuscripts than for published or assessed work.

(ii) Format for edited books:

If the book you refer to is an edited one, indicate this by including ‘(Ed.)’ or ‘(Eds.)’is the
case as below:
Brain, M. Y., & Head, H. I. S. (Eds.). (1993). The amazing parietal lobes. Brighton:
Rocksolid.

(iii) Format for book chapters in edited books:

If you wish to refer to a chapter in a book that is an edited collection of chapters from
different authors, you should list the reference under the name of the author of the chapter not
the book. the full reference should take the following format (note that it is the book title that
is italicised, since this is still the key element for anyone wishing to request a copy of the
article, but now includes the specific page numbers for that chapter.
Cerebellum, A. B. (1993). The parietal lobes and spatial perception. In M. Y. Brain &
H. I. S. Head (Eds.), The amazing parietal lobes (pp. 309-330). Brighton:
Rocksolid.

(iv) Format for journal paper references

For journal papers, the most important detail in helping locate the article is the journal title,
so this should be emphasised by italicising it. Journal titles should be given in title case (that
is, all major words should begin with a capital letter). The title of the article, however, should
be given in sentence case, just like book titles. Journals are published in the form of separate
issues that come out from as little as once to perhaps more than twenty times a year. The
pages of each issue are typically numbered consecutively so that they can be combined
together and often hardbound as volumes. A volume covers a discrete period, such as a
calendar year or a quarter, depending on how frequently the issues are produced. Hence your
reader will need to know which volume a paper was published in but is unlikely to need to
know which issue if they already know the page numbers. The volume number appears after
the journal title and is also italicised to reflect its importance.

Knight, R., & King, S. (1996). Non-linguistic communication in chess players. Journal
of Semiotics and Board Games, 122, 45-49.

(v) Format for references to electronic sources

Again, the reader needs sufficient information to be able to retrieve the source. Because
electronic information can change rapidly, it is important to note the date when information
was retrieved along with the name and / or address of the source.

(a) CD-ROM Abstracts (PsycLIT)

Newstough, V. (1999). The myth of computer phobia in mature students. Journal of
Clinical Studies in Education, 16, 24-36. Retrieved November 12, 2004, from
SilverPlatter File: PsycLIT Item: 90-32451

(b) World Wide Web

 Newstough, V. (1999). The myth of computer phobia in mature students. Journal of
Clinical Studies in Educational Settings, 16, 24-36. Retrieved January 23, 2003, from
http://www.apa.org/journals/newstough.html

(vi) Ordering the reference list

Reference lists can be very long so they must be ordered systematically so that readers can
find references they are looking for quickly and easily. Use the following rules (in order):

a. List references alphabetically by author,

so that
Anderson (1912)
comes before
Zajonc (1988)

and
Shaw, P., Trainer, Z., & Clavell, T. (1991)…
comes before
Skinner, B. F., Eysenck, H., & Freud, S. (1985) ...

b. For names with the same root, note that “nothing precedes something”,
so that
Brown, J. R
comes before
Browning, A. R.

c. where an author has several works, give all single author papers first, in chronological
order,
Zeigarnik, B. (1967) ...
Zeigarnik, B. (1968) ...
Zeigarnik, B. (1970) ...

d. with multi-author works, list alphabetically by the second author, or where that’s the same
by the third author and so on.
Shaw, P. (1989).
Shaw, P., Clavell, T., Bond, J., & Barnum, P. (1985)
Shaw, P., Trainer, Z., & Clavell, T. (1996)
Shaw, P., Trainer, Z., & Weaver, S. (1991)

e. where an author or group of authors have more than one reference for the same author in
the same year, distinguish between them with the letters a, b, etc. and make sure you include
these letters when citing the papers in the body text.
Thomson, J. (1967a)
Thomson, J. (1967b)
Thomson, J. (1967c)
4. General Points
(i) Only include sources that are cited in the report/essay/article ie DO NOT
include sources NOT CITED in the text — even if you have read them.
(ii) Please use references to PsycINFO and Web sources judiciously as the
PsycINFO sources provide a limited view (abstracts only) of the articles, and
Web sites may contain information that is not necessarily sound academically.
(iii) There are standard abbreviations for journal titles which you will find in the
literature - however, we do not wish you to abbreviate journal titles — quote
them in full: this will avoid confusion.
(iv) Not all of the ‘articles’ or ‘books’ used as illustration above are real — so
don’t try to find them!

If you are really unsure after reading and checking the guide, ask a tutor for advice.