APA Publication Manual 6th Edition Out in July

In case you have not yet heard, the new Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association will be released in July.

One of the big changes from the 5th edition is coverage of issues related to computer technology:

• dealing with supplemental data
• referencing electronic sources
• a new APAstyle Web page

Table of Contents

1. Writing for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

2. Manuscript Structure and Content

3. Writing Clearly and Concisely

4. The Mechanics of Style

5. Displaying Results

6. Crediting Sources

7. Reference Examples

8. The Publication Process

Appendices

Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS)

Meta-Analysis Reporting Standards (MARS)

Flow of Participants Through Each Stage of an Experiment or Quasi-Experiment

References

Index

The new Publication Manual includes changes in:

Ethics

Simplified Heading Styles

Updated guidelines for reducing bias in language

New ways to report inferential statistics and revised table of statistical abbreviations

Ways to handle data sets and media

Displaying electronic data

Emphasis on DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

The Publication Process

Pre-order the Publication Manual HERE

Race/Ethnicity: Operational Definitions?

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights the research of Inkelas, Soldner, and Szelenyi. They tested three approaches other researchers use to classify race or ethnicity.

The three approaches tested were:

• Classify as biracial or multiracial
• Classify multiracial persons as the least common of categories selected
• Classify according to OMB categories

Their findings indicated that how researchers classified race or ethnicity could profoundly affect the results.

To us, this type of classification is an example of the importance of the operational definition. Recall our discussion of operational definitions on pp. 95-97 in chapter 4. On page 97, we write:

• In the Know: Perhaps the most important step you can take if you want to move from confusion to confidence about a scientific topic is to find out how the concepts are measured. Knowing how schizophrenia, intelligence, or subjective well-being is measured gives you a big boost toward understanding the topic.

To that, we add that race and ethnicity are not easy to operationally define. Thus, one should be very cautious when comparing studies on those variables. Be sure YOU know what operational definitions the authors are using for race and gender.

Common APA Style Errors

Every semester I see students make the same APA style errors over and over. Of course, I expect these errors but I also expect students to learn from my corrections; trial-and-success learning works.

In my classes (and as we note in chapter 11), I have students first write the Method section. I also have them include the Title Page. Here are some suggestions inspired by this semester's first drafts:

• It's a plan; it should be written in the future tense.
• The Title Page should follow the example in the APA Style Manual (p. 306)
• Citations in text should follow examples in the APA Style Manual (p. 84)
• All pages should be numbered and a short title included on the upper right header
• The page numbers and short title should be added using the word processor's header function
• Double space entire document
• Use the spell checker
  
• Use No Bold
• Use No underline
• Don't cross subsections
• Participants subsection should only describe participants
• Apparatus subsection should only describe equipment that will be used
• Procedure section should only describe how data will be collected

Finally, will someone who is not familiar (e.g., friend, roommate, parent, etc.) with your proposed research understand what you wish to do?