How to Do a Research Literature Review Paper in APA Style

APA (the American Psychological Association) provides information about how to write a literature review paper. The "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association" provides guidelines for sections of an APA paper, headings, citations and other information you will need. Whether you directly quote a particular source or not, you must cite every source from which you obtain ideas as well as research. The Publication Manual also provides detailed information on how an APA paper should be formatted, including margins, spacing and page headings.

Things You'll Need

  • Sources
  • APA Publication Manual
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Instructions

  1. Formatting

    • 1

      Click on "Format" at the top of the document, and select "Font" from the drop-down menu. Place "Times New Roman" under Font, "Regular" under font style, and 12 under size.

    • 2

      Click on "Format" and select "Paragraph" from the drop-down menu. Set alignment for "Left" and line spacing for "Double." Everything is double spaced, including the title, headings, references and quotations. Set margins at top, bottom, left and right for one inch.

    • 3

      Compose an abbreviated title for your manuscript, called a running head. Click on "View" and select "Header and Footers." Using all uppercase letters, type your running head in the space provided for the header, then hit "page number."

    Writing the Paper

    • 4

      The heading for the literature review should be the title of the paper; do not use the word "introduction" or "review of literature."

    • 5

      As you write the literature review, put in your citations. You need to provide the last name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication for every source: books, journal articles, newspapers, lectures, websites and digital object identifiers (DOIs), whether or not you quote the source.

    • 6

      Write the citation in one of the following ways:

      The author (Phillips, 2010)...

      Phillips (2010) says...

      In 2010 Phillips found....

    • 7

      When citing sources with more than one author, write it in one of the following ways:

      The authors (Berg, Bronson & Matthews, 2009) found...

      Berg, Bronson and Matthews (2009) found...

      In 2009 Berg, Bronson and Matthews found...

      Note that the ampersand (&) is only used within parentheses.

    • 8

      If you quote material you should place quotation marks to indicate the beginning and end of the quotation. You must indicate the page number from which you are quoting, with surnames of the author(s) and publication year. For example, the researchers (Berg, Bronson & Matthews, 2010, p. 412) state...

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