Skip to Main Content
UCF Libraries Home

NUR 3165 - Nursing Research

This Libguide is designed to help UCF Nursing students enrolled in NUR3165 identify, understand, and effectively use relevant electronic sources, including eBooks and article databases.

APA 7th Edition

APA 7th Edition

APA 7th edition is the newest version of APA, released in October 2019. APA provides a structured way to format your papers, include in-text citations and references, and avoid plagiarism.

Pay special attention to your professors' specific requirements. Professors often have requirements in addition to the basic student version of APA. Some common "additional" requirements include: an abstract page and a running head. These two things are not required for student APA papers, but your professors may require them. See examples of an abstract and running head on the professional sample paper.

Important: Double check that your class requires the 7th edition and not the 6th edition. If your class requires the 6th edition, the Purdue OWL provides information on this older edition until 2021.

Online Resources

APA Style (American Psychological Association)

APA Style Blog

APA Style Tutorials and Webinars

Steps to Cite a Source

How do you cite a source? Here are the steps.

  1. Find a source (academic journal article, book, etc.)
  2. Use part of that source (direct quote, paraphrase, summary, or concept)
  3. Add an in-text citation to the body of your paper in the sentence where you discuss or quote that source
  4. Add a reference to the end of your paper on the References page(s)

In-Text Citation Examples

Note: all citation examples below are fictitious but with correct APA 7th formatting, courtesy of an accurate but hungry librarian.

One author, parenthetical
A new ice cream flavor includes cucumber, mint, and ginger (Dubach, 2020).

One author, narrative
Dubach (2020) designed a new ice cream flavor including cucumber, mint, and ginger.

Two authors, parenthetical
A new variety of pizza includes toppings of asparagus and ashwagandha (Dubach & Todd, 2020).

Two authors, narrative
Dubach and Todd (2020) describe a new variety of pizza which includes toppings of asparagus and ashwagandha.

Three or more authors, parenthetical
Consistent taco consumption was found to increase happiness (Nuhn et al., 2020).

Same author, same year, two different sources
Another study invented the inverted quesadilla (Furlong, 2020a). A subsequent study describes the foundation for inverted quesadilla science (Furlong, 2020b).

Organizational author (with acronym)
July 7 is World Chocolate Day (Society for the Appreciation of Chocolate and Kiwi [SACK], 2020). How much do you really know about chocolate, and how does it relate to kiwi? Chocolate dipped kiwi is expected to rise in popularity next year (SACK, 2020).

Unknown year
Tacos typically only include pickled foods if those foods are also described as spicy (Nuhn et al., n.d.).

One page (for quotations)
Tacos are described as the "most versatile food" (Nuhn et al., 2020, p. 2).

Multiple pages (for quotations)
Pizza is "the poetry of palates, and the finesse of flavor" (Dubach & Todd, 2020, pp. 4-5).

Unknown page numbers for quotations (count the paragraphs)
A wise person once said, "ice cream is to gelato as foundations are to fortresses" (Furlong, 2020, para. 2).

Reference Examples

Journal article with DOI assigned

Hu, J. (2007). Health-related quality of life in low-income older African Americans. Journal of Community Health Nursing, 24(4), 253-265. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370010701645901

Journal article without DOI from a database requiring sign-in (e.g., one of the UCF Libraries' databases) or a print copy

Whalen, F. L., & France, R. (1996). A lab's outreach for healthier school kids. Medical Laboratory Observer, 28(1), 59-61.

Journal article without DOI from an openly accessible website (i.e., no log in required)

Vladeck, B. C. (1989). Long-term care for the elderly: The future of nursing homes. The Western Journal of Medicine, 150(2), 215-220. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2499122/

See more journal article references from APA Style, with special exceptions for clinical practice references.

Journal article tips:

  • Automatic citation generators are helpful, but they can have errors, so make sure to double check them.
  • Authors are all listed unless there are more than 20. List the first 19 authors and then put . . . (an ellipsis) between the 19th author's name and the last author's name.
  • Article titles are not capitalized except for the first letter of the first word, the first letter of the subtitle, and any proper nouns.
  • Journal titles are italicized, and capitalize the first letters of the important words.
  • Volume numbers are also italicized, but issue numbers (within parentheses) are not.
  • DOIs (digital object identifiers) usually show up in the library databases, but if not, search for them on search.crossref.org

Additional reference examples from APA Style:

What's New with the 7th Edition?

Paper format

  • Student papers do not require abstracts or a running head (unless professor requires either of these)
  • Five heading levels changed: all bold and title case, but varies in position and italicization
  • New formatting guidelines for annotated bibliographies

In-text citations

  • Only list up to two authors
  • For works with three or more authors, just include name of first author and then et al. like this: (Dubach et al., 2020).

References

  • Up to 20 authors included in a reference
  • If more than twenty authors, list the first 19 authors, then an ellipsis, then the last author
  • DOI should be in the format of a URL
  • For works from most databases with no DOI, don’t include a URL; reference should be the same as for a print source 
  • Book references now omit publisher location 
  • New ways to format references for social media and websites