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The abstract is a summary of the contents of the paper. It begins on a new page. It should be a single paragraph (not indented and NOT justified) of no more than 960 characters, including punctuation and spaces. Reviews or theoretical articles should use 75 to 100 words and empirical studies should use 100 to 120 words. All numbers, except those beginning sentences, are typed as digits. The abstract is accurate, concise and specific, without abbreviations or acronyms, and nonevaluative. The abstract summarizes the methods(s) of study, hypothesis(es), and any empirical results. Conclusions and implications Manuscripts presented by psychologists for publication generally follow the guidelines explained in the current Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2001) which is now in its 5th edition. These guidelines have historically been given the general name of "APA Style" and differ in very important ways from the style and formats used by other disciplines, e.g., the Modern Language Association (MLA) style or the widespread University of Chicago Press style (Turabian, 1973). This paper will explain the major elements of APA style and is itself presented in this style to show you what a sample manuscript should look like. The widespread introduction of personal computers and the Internet over the last decade has resulted in many changes in APA style which are reflected in this paper.
APA Style is fairly straight forward in its approach. It presupposes that the text of the paper or article you have written will follow a structure of some type. All papers begin with an Introduction although you should never use the word "Introduction" as a heading or label. This introductory section should introduce the problem, develop the background to your study, and then state the purpose and rationale for the remainder of your report or research (APA, 2001, pp. 15-17).
The structure of theoretical, review, and historical papers will depend upon what you are writing about. Compared to empirical or experimental papers (see below), there is no automatic set of sections which are used in a theoretical, review, or historical paper. However, as an aid to your thinking, consider the structure of an imaginary literature review paper that focuses upon "Treatment Approaches to Alcoholism." Topics here flow in a logical order and there is an overarching structure to the paper. Evaluations or presentations of your opinion(s) are normally reserved for the ending Discussion section of a paper. Table 1 displays what the structure of a hypothetical literature In papers which are experimental or empirically-based, the introductory section is followed by three sections which are labeled: Method, Results, and Discussion. The Methods section contains a description of what was done by you as a researcher. It may have subsections labeled, e.g., participants, the apparatus, the procedure and so on. The Results section provides an overview of the data gathered and any statistical analyses of these data. Finally, the Discussion section follows. Only after you have presented all the objective data in the past sections should you offer any evaluation or interpretation of these data in the Discussion section. In this section you should cite how your results compared with predictions of your original hypothesis(es) and suggest directions for future research.
Note that psychologists do not cite page numbers in the references unless a direct quotation is made or attention is being directed to a particular citation in the literature. It is usual practice to give only a general reference and allow the readers to consult the references themselves if they need to examine the item or study more thoroughly.
Psychologists do not provide bibliographies in their papers; these are called References and only contain materials actually used in the paper (see the Reference section at the end of this paper). This list of sources is never called "Bibliography" or some such title. Psychologists do not use footnotes except in very rare circumstances. In order to indicate how references are written, I will make note of several different types here and direct you to look at how they are formatted in the accompanying References section: a journal article (Bekerian, 1993), a book (Cone & Foster, 1993; Mitchell & Larson, 1987), an edited book (Gibbs & Huang, 1991), and a book chapter in an edited book (Bjork, 1989). A newspaper article ("New drug," 1993) or a magazine article (Posner, 1993) might be cited by a writer. Check the Publication Manual (APA, 2001) to examine the 70 separate types of citations that can be made. The 5th edition of the Manual contains detailed examples of how to specify legal references as well as how to cite electronic, computer- based or Internet-derived sources. I have included in the accompanying Table 2 some examples of what such references look like for several American Psychological Association. (1991). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Bekerian, D. A. (1993). In search of the typical eyewitness. American Bjork, R. A. (1989). Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in human memory. In H. L. Roediger III & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory & consciousness (pp. 309-330). Hillsdale, NJ: Cone, J. D., & Foster, S. L. (1993). Dissertations and theses from start to finish: Psychology and related fields. Washington, DC: American Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (Eds.). (1991). Children of color: Psychological interventions with minority youth. San Francisco: Mitchell, T. R., & Larson, J. R., Jr. (1987). People in organizations: An introduction to organizational behavior (3rd ed.). New York: New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993, July 15). The Washington Post, p. A12.
Posner, M. I. (1993, October 29). Seeing the mind. Science, 262, 673- Turabian, K. L. (1973). A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations (4th ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Possible Structure for a Literature Review of "Treatment Approaches to ________________________________________________________________________ (Introduction) [This is not written in the text of the paper] Alcoholics Anonymous: The First 12–Step Method B. Treatment of Underlying Alcoholism Antabuse and Other Pharmacological Treatments. Group and Rehabilitative Therapies. C. The Problem of Controlled Drinking Discussion of Future Directions in Treatment ________________________________________________________________________ Examples Citation Formats for Selected Types of Electronic and Internet- ______________________________________________________________
Internet article based on a print source
Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). Unified psychology [Electronic version]. American Psychologist, 56, 1069-1079.
If you think the article may have been changed when put online, you Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). Unified psychology.
American Psychologist, 56, 1069-1079. Retrieved March 6, 2002 from PsycARTICLES database: http://gateway1.ovid.com:80/ovidweb.cgi Article from Internet-only journal
Massey, A. & Hevern, V. W. (1996, December/1997, April). Postscript two: Literature as geodetic survey map. The Qualitative Report, 2(4). Retrieved April 14, 2002 from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR2-4/massey3.htm Multipage document, no date
University of Kent at Canterbury, The Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing. (n.d.). 45 years in the Turkish village, 1949-1994. Paul Stirling's ethnographic data archives. Retrieved April 14, 2002 from http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/TVillage/notes.html Paper presented at a Conference, abstract retrieved from
University web site.
Hevern, V. W. (2000, June). Alterity and self-presentation via the Web: Dialogical and narrative aspects of identity construction.
Paper presented at the 1st International Conference on the Dialogical Self. Abstract retrieved April 14, 2002 from http://www.socsci.kun.nl/psy/congress2000/papers/hevern.htm

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