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The ubiquitous anthropomorphism is this week’s APA tidbit.  A writer attributing human characteristics or abilities to something animal or inanimate commits an anthropomorphism (see page 38 of the APA manual).  They are acceptable in the popular literature and can be an effective tool for fine-tuning meaning.  They are not generally acceptable in the professional literature, especially the research literature.  You will see anthropomorphisms that slipped past a journal editor, but work on avoiding them in your writing this term.  Examples of anthropomorphisms frequently appearing in dissertation manuscripts are:

This study sought to determine if the …. (a human can determine, a study can not).  Revise to state, the author of the study sought to determine if the…

The elementary school grouped students into… (teachers can group students, a school can not).  Revise to state, the students in the elementary school were grouped into…  or the school principal grouped the students into…

These data imply… (a researcher can identify implications from data, but the data can not).  Revise to state, from the data analysis, the author identified three implications.

This week’s APA tidbit is illustrated by a quote from page vii of the Galvan textbook.

This book was written for students who are required to “do library research” and write literature reviews as term papers in content-area classes in the social and behavioral sciences.

In this sentence the double quote marks set off three words (do library research) as having some special meaning the author wants to convey to the reader.  Several other words and phrases are set off on page viii.  If Galvan were strictly adhering to APA writing conventions, is he correctly using the double quote marks?  If not, what should he do?  Check out pages 82, 83, 100, and 101 of the APA Manual for guidelines to answer these two questions. 

The APA tidbit this week is one of the changes for within-text citations new in the 5th edition of the APA manual.  Within-text citations use the author-date method; that is the surname of the author (do not include suffixes such as Jr.) and the year of publication inserted in the text at the appropriate point.  If the name of the author appears as part of the narrative, cite only the year of publication in parentheses.  An example would be

Gardner (1983) describes three biases of American culture that impact thinking regarding the nature of intelligence.  There is the westist attitude in which Americans put certain western cultural values on a pedestal.  A number of writers (Wiggins, 1993; Sternberg, 1985a; Miele, 1995), however, disagree about the importance of the westist attitude in relation to intelligence.

The change in the 5th edition is that within a paragraph, you need not include the year in subsequent references to a document as long as the document cannot be confused with others cited in the paragraph.  For example, no date is included the second time the same Gardner document is mentioned.

Gardner (1983) describes three biases of American culture that impact thinking regarding the nature of intelligence.  There is the westist attitude in which Americans put certain western cultural values on a pedestal.  A number of writers (Wiggins, 1993; Sternberg, 1985a; Miele, 1995), however, disagree about the importance of the westist attitude in relation to intelligence.  The second bias described by Gardner is testist.

This change not only makes it easier for a writer, but reduces the clutter of many parentheses filled with names and dates in a narrative that break the reader's concentration.

This week we tackle some of the speed bumps encountered using reference citations in text (labeled with-in text references by Creswell).  These are cites in your written narrative that usually take one of two forms.

1. According to the first investigation by Creswell (1998), three factors influence…
2. It has been proposed (Creswell, 1998; Deekins, 1999) that three factors…

The speed bumps most frequent in the writing of graduate students are

1. When a work has three, four, or five authors listed, cite all authors the first time the citation is used in your narrative.  After the first time, you list only the surname of the first author followed by et al. for every subsequent use (e.g., Algozzine et al., 1998).

2. When a work has six or more authors, list only the surname of the first author followed by et al. for the first and every subsequent use.

3. If the reference name is long and cumbersome but has a familiar or understandable abbreviation (e.g., National Center for Educational Statistics abbreviated to NCES), use the abbreviation in the second and subsequent uses.  The first cite would include the entire name while the second and subsequent cites would use the abbreviation.

First cite: The largest school districts have 85% of these problems (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2000).

Second and subsequent cites: Approximately 42% of the current teachers will retire by the year 2010 (NCES, 2001).

For all the seamy details, refer to sections 3.94, 3.95, and 3.96 on pages 207 – 210 in the APA Publication Manual (5th edition).

This week the APA tidbit focus is on the knotty little problem of how to cite and reference a report you read about in another document.  For example, while reading Does computer technology improve student learning and achievement? by Schacter & Fagnano (1999) you find they summarize Wolk’s 1994 report titled,  Project-based learning: Pursuits with a purpose.   The results reported by Wolk are exactly what you need to justify the project you want to propose.  The problem, however, is that Wolk’s report is an unpublished manuscript (see examples 58 and 59 on page 263 of the APA manual) and you cannot obtain it.

Fortunately, the procedure for solving this problem is explained on page 247 of the APA manual.  In short, you would use a with-in text citation such as this:

The results reported by Wolk (as cited in Schacter & Fagnano, 1999) support three conclusions.

On the reference pages cite Schacter and Fagnano in the ordinary manner, but do not include a citation for Wolk.  One note of caution!  Citing material from secondary sources is not encouraged in journal articles, theses, or dissertations.  Limited use is acceptable for this course.

This week is a potpourri of APA tidbits gleaned from the exercises I’ve been reviewing.  Remember, beginning this week, your assignments must include a title page, so let’s begin with the elements of it. 

The title page has three parts: (a) title, (b) author’s name and institutional affiliation, and (c) running head.  For this course, the title will be the name of the assignment.  You will be the author and UWF the institution of affiliation.  The running head is labeled and printed in capital letters and is a shortened form of the title.  The first two or three words of the running head are placed into a page header with your word processor’s page numbering function.  The title page is page 1 of the assignment.  Check the fine print on pages 10-12 and the example on page 306 of the APA manual.

The second tidbit is a reminder that all lines in your manuscript should be double-spaced and you should use the preferred typefaces and font size listed on page 285 of the APA manual.  I prefer you use a 12-point Times Roman (or Times New Roman) typeface.

The third tidbit is not actually an APA guideline, but closely related to the directions for reference entries.  Use the hanging indent feature of your word processor to construct references.  If you force the format with line breaks and the space bar, you will have the reference format fall apart every time you change the view, margins, typeface, or typeface size.

Last, use headings that follow the APA directions on pages 113-115 of the APA manual.  The easiest way to select your headings is to refer to page 114 and decide if you need one, two, or three levels and then follow the examples.  You will need more than three levels very infrequently.  Note the headings that are italicized and the rules given for capitalization.

The APA tidbit for week 8 comes from a dissertation manuscript we reviewed this week.  An entry in the reference pages read

Franklin, G. (2001).  Lecture notes from EDF 7685 Educational 

       Foundations: A philosophical and multicultural analysis.  Pensacola, FL: University of West Florida.

How does one cite lecture notes from a class or a discussion from a professional workshop that provided information that should be included in your project report? 

The first question to be answered is this?  Can the information be accurately recovered in its original form?  In the case of lecture notes, workshop discussions, personal interviews, and telephone conversations the answer is no.  For these sources of information and data use the personal communication citation as directed on page 214 of the APA manual.  Note, especially, personal communication cites are placed only in the narrative.  They are not included in the references.

The APA tidbit selected for review this week is the reference entry for electronic media.  All of you included these in your literature review and some of you had a challenge to find a format example in the APA manual that had a good fit with the item you wanted to include in your reference list.

At a minimum, reference to an Internet source should provide a document title or description, a date, and an address.  Whenever possible, identify the authors of the document as well.  The URL is the most critical element.  If it doesn’t work, readers cannot find the cited material.

The majority of documents retrieved from online publications in psychology and the behavioral sciences are exact duplicates of the print versions.  For these, use the same reference format as for a print document, but if you viewed it only in the electronic form add in brackets after the article title [Electronic version].  If you have reason to believe the electronic version has additional information or has been changed from the print version, add the date you retrieved it and the URL. 

The retrieval statement is specified and varies only for a few items: 

     Retrieved October 25, 2002, from http://jbr.org/articles.html 

Do not add a period at the end of the URL even though it ends the reference entry.  For specific directions and examples of constructing references to electronic documents, review pages 271-281 of the APA manual.

This week the APA tidbit is a small one that guides the use of brackets and parentheses in your narrative.  In fact, there are only two things to remember: (a) use brackets inside parentheses and (c) reverse when using mathematical material.  See page 86 of the APA manual for specific directions and examples.

This week the APA tidbit is one that will be used more in the future than is used now.  Here is an example of a text citation from a dissertation we reviewed this week.

 Bandura stated, “To be an agent is to intentionally make things happen by one’s actions” (2001, ¶ 1).

The question is, why did the author use the paragraph symbol instead of using p. to indicate a page number?  Does the reference for the citation help?

 Bandura, A. (2001).  Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective.  Annual Review of   
      Psychology, 52, 1-26.  Retrieved September 15, 2001, from the Wilson Select database.

The online database gave the page numbers the article occupied in the journal, but the author of the dissertation used the paragraph symbol rather than a page number because the online source did not have page numbers. So, she had to indicate the quote’s location by giving the paragraph number.  All the details are on pages 213-214 of the APA manual.

The tidbit this week is one of the quirks in APA format for reference entries.  Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you find a journal article that has eight authors.  Actually, there are two quirks here.  The first is this: in the reference entry you use et al. after the sixth author’s name to represent the rest.  The second quirk is the citation in text: you use the first author’s name followed by et al. every time the work is cited, including the first time.  See pages 240-241 for the details.

This week we begin to prepare the final draft of the proposal and close out the content of the course.  For the APA tidbit this week , I thought it might be helpful to list the five more common APA problems encountered in the proposal drafts and let you correct them. 

1. …emerging evidence is showing that even “successful” attitude change…

2. Approximately seven hundred ninth through twelfth grade students from the…

3. The NELS followed a cohort of 1988 8^th -graders.

4. …supported in the literature by only two themes: 1) computer use among people with disabilities and 2) Internet use among people with disabilities.

5. The questionnaire solicited information on a variety of topics…