As I said in my email, it is essential in all academic subjects that you include sources in essays and reports.
One piece of advice I have already mentioned is to keep track of your sources as you go along, as it’s much quicker than having to go back and find sources again. If you are working on the computer then just type them/paste them at the foot of your document and you can sort out the formatting later. If you are using pencil and paper, ensure you write them out when you take notes on a study – do it at the start so you don’t forget.
For all studies from the Higher course and from the textbook you will be able to copy the reference from the back of the textbook or booklet. You can also cut-n-paste references from my research studies blog.
Note that if you take info from Wikipedia (which you should be wary of doing btw), they have a useful ‘cite this page’ tool (in a box on the left ) which takes you to a list of possible styles – pick the first one, APA style.
‘Citations’: while the end section is called references, the technical name for the name and year in your text is an ‘in-text citation’. Some people also refer to the references at the end as citations, or use the term citation to mean both together (the bit in the text and the full details at the end). Just to confuse you…
One other thing: a bibliography is a background reading list whereas a reference section contains all of the works and only those works cited by the author in the text. In psychology report you have a references section, there is no need to put in background reading e.g. textbooks.
