Friday 13 March 2009

Citations

Just to add to my previous comments....a couple of issues about citations. The standard format used in Psychology is 'in text citations', where you refer to a previous work with name and year.

A lot of you are writing things in the format:

"...Selye did an experiment in 1936 where..."

This is non-standard. The standard way to express it would be:

"Selye (1936) did an experiment..."

OR

"...rats were stressed (Selye, 1936)."

Use brackets for the years. As well as being the standard format, it is also more accurate, as the year in question is the year of publication, but this might not be the year the research was actually carried out. So to say for example "Milgram did an experiment in 1963..." would be innacurate; his study was actually carried out between 1961-62, even though the citation would be "Milgram (1963)".

All part of correct presentation and style - this is level 2.

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