Master of Counselling
Citing Your Sources

APA Citation Style

An important aspect of preparing graduate-level academic work is careful attention to the completeness and accuracy of your references list. Your list should contain citations to all information sources you referred to or consulted, which allows your readers to locate and consult those sources first-hand if they so choose. The University of Lethbridge Master of Counselling program requires students to use the citation style developed by the American Psychological Association (APA). Published only in print, this manual is entitled Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.), and is often referred to informally as the "APA citation style," "APA style," and "APA manual."

Assistance with preparing research papers and citing information sources using the APA citation style is available in the following resources:

Citation Management Tools

Collecting and organizing all of the details describing information sources you have used in a research paper can be an onerous task. Citation management tools can ease that burden because they are designed to help you to search for, download, and organize citation information. Some tools are free, and others involve a fee or license. The University of Lethbridge has a site license to the citation management program called EndNote.

Browse the Library's guide to EndNote for a more detailed description and instructions on how to download and install the program on your personal workstation. Although citation management tools are extremely useful, they do require some initial investment of time to install on your workstation and effort to learn how to use them effectively.

EndNote is a complex tool with many powerful features, but keep in mind that you do not have to learn about or use all of them. One of the most attractive basic features is your ability to search a journal index (let's say, PsycINFO), save a number of citations to articles, books, and other relevant items, and then to export those citations directly into EndNote where you can choose your preferred citation style to format your citations as a references list.

Another very attractive feature of EndNote is called "Cite While You Write" which works with Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 while you are writing a paper to find and insert citations into your Word document from your EndNote library. This feature also dynamically creates a properly formatted bibliography at the end of your paper in the citation style of your choosing.

For an introduction to EndNote's many features, have a look at the online tutorials offered by EndNote. The first tutorial called "Bibliographies Made Easy" provides an excellent 5 minute overview of all of the main features of EndNote. It also briefly explains the main features of a related, simpler citation management tool, EndNote Web.

Need Help?

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Ask for help
if you need it!

We are now at the end of this 10 step tutorial on refreshing and honing your information literacy skills. If there is only one thing you remember, it should be this: research help is available, so please ask!

  • Education subject librarian: contact information for your Education subject librarian is available on the Library's Education Resources page (top right).
  • Information and Research Assistance: there are many different ways to contact the library research assistance specialists via Ask Us

We hope you find this tutorial a useful overview of the research process for your Master of Counselling degree program. If you have feedback on this tutorial, please feel free to email the Education subject librarian noted at the bottom of this page.

Maintained by Rumi Graham

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