The Purpose of APA

By Jessica DePalatis, ARC Consultant

It has been three and half years since I migrated to George Fox and during this time I have discovered a trend on campus. It caught my attention in my general psychology class freshman year and has particularly manifested itself when I serving as an ARC consultant.

Students loathe writing papers in APA.

Personally, I find this sad, for I have come to love this method of presenting information. However, I know most students only get one or two encounters with APA during college, which is not enough to master it. Still, I would like to take a minute to defend APA and explain in part why it behaves the way it does.

First off, do you know what APA stands for? No, not a torture device. It stands for the American Psychological Association. This means APA style was created by psychologists for psychologists. It was not made with Lit majors in mind or even aspiring elementary teachers. In fact, many of the qualities that separate APA from MLA can be explained by the goals of the discipline that developed it.

For a psychologist, the bulk of the writing one encounters and crafts are research reports and journal articles. Therefore, APA style is particularly suited for these. The idea was to create a strict system so that researchers could easily present their findings. If everyone must report in the same fashion then I will know exactly where to find your results or method sections. This explains why APA has so many rules.

Another example of APA catering to journal articles lies in the in-text citations.  If one paraphrases or summarizes an article then he or she does not  have to put page numbers in the in-text citation. Journal articles are normally short, which means if you want to look up the concept cited you might as well read the whole article. And then there are the doi numbers that gives so many students head aches. Yes, they are important. They are the best identification system for pulling up articles on the web.

But wait. What about books? Books are normally discouraged from use in papers and reports for several reasons. One, books don’t have to be peer reviewed where as journals do. Second, psychology is changing so fast that old books are only useful if you are writing about a particular old theory (normally the flaws of it) or a dead psychologist. The most current information about psychology in our internet saturated age is on the web in the form of peer reviewed journals, or textbooks that are constantly being upgraded.

I hope this gives a small explanation for why APA is different. Don’t worry. If you are not a psychologist you probably won’t have to submit to the APA very often. (Unless you are a business major. Don’t ask me why on that one). All in all, if practiced and used for articles, APA makes a lot of sense in the long run.  

For details on APA and other styles, go to http://www.georgefox.edu/arc/Style%20Guides.html.