How to Write Survey Item Summaries in APA

The APA (American Psychological Association) citation format is most frequently used in the social sciences. When you use your personal computer and write a paper or laboratory report for a psychology course, anthropology course or economics course, among many other disciplines, you may be required to cite your sources with in-text citations in addition to a Works Cited page, according to the APA Style Guide. A survey item summary might be the abstract of a set of survey results as published online or in a journal or magazine. It can also be found in the original survey itself as a synthesis of the overall findings of the survey. Surveys are popular and low-cost ways to gather data for social science studies, particularly for mining census data and for conducting social psychology studies.

Things You'll Need

  • Personal computer
  • APA Style Guide
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Instructions

  1. In-Text Citations

    • 1

      Cite the respective survey summary item as you refer to it or paraphrase it in your research paper. For a survey with one responsible author/researcher, include a parenthetical citation with the author's last name, the year the survey was conducted and the page number where the specific reference point is found: (Hannaford, 1997, p. 195). Follow this format when citing another scientist's interpretation of the findings of a survey as published in a scientific journal or magazine.

    • 2

      Include the date and the page number in their own parenthetical citation if you include the name of the responsible researcher in the body of your paper: "According to Hannaford (1998, p. 195), the survey's results were inconclusive because of poorly applied methodology."

    • 3

      Create -- from a survey item summary -- a new indented paragraph for quotes that are longer than 40 words; do not include quotation marks. Even if you write your own lead-in to contextualize the quote, begin a new paragraph to enter the quote. Indent the block quote by half an inch on either margin. Use double-spacing. Include your parenthetical citation after the last punctuation mark in the last sentence of the quote; it does not need its own period.

    Works Cited Page

    • 4

      Include the survey item summary you cited in your Works Cited page at the end of your paper. List authors first by their last names, followed by their initials: Hannaford, G. W. For survey item summaries with multiple authors, list each author by last name in the order in which the original source lists the authors' names; that is, if the names are not already alphabetized, do not alphabetize them yourself. For example: Hannaford, G. W., Jones, K. J., Beatty, W., & Yu, H. J. For sources that have more than one author, always use the ampersand symbol before the final author is listed.

    • 5

      Place the year the survey item summary was published in parentheses after the final author's name is cited, followed by a period: (1993).

    • 6

      Write the title next. Do not italicize the font for the title of the study, survey, or item summary, and finish the title with a period. Capitalize only the first word of the title.

    • 7

      Place the title of the publication next in italics, followed by a comma and the volume number and a comma, followed by the inclusive page numbers where the source you are citing can be found: Scientific American, 52, 113-200. (Note: Italicize "Scientific American" and "52"; do not italicize the page numbers.)

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