apa style article review

apa style article review

The Importance of APA Style in Article Reviews

1. Introduction

The importance of APA style can often be a source of frustration; it seems like the rules are constantly changing yet teachers and professors expect the assignments to be error-free. Learning APA style will benefit you in several ways and the effort you put into it will help you long after you have graduated. APA style puts forth specific rules for writing and organizing a paper as well as citing a source (setting up a system to avoid plagiarism). APA style requires you to create a title page for your paper. This is a good source of being sure that you are following the assignment and answering the right questions. APA style also has a straightforward way of citing sources in the text of your paper. This is useful when you are directly quoting a source or even when you are paraphrasing an idea. APA style requires you to put in the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page number where the information can be found. This is good if you must return to the article review at a later date to remember what information you were commenting on.

Throughout your years in high school and college, you will be required to write a number of research papers. Sometimes you will be creating critiques of articles (be it in sociology, psychology, or even the sciences) and oftentimes these reviews are written using the American Psychological Association style, often referred to as “APA”. These assignments are a learning tool that teachers use to help students understand the complex interactions that take place in the world, as well as various reactions from subjects active and nonactive. It is imperative to remember that these assignments are meant to be tools for learning, and no article is a perfect tool for learning. Understanding the scope of these tools and the sometimes-subtle implications in scholarly work help teachers create better assignments for their students.

2. Overview of APA Style

APA style has often been criticized for being unnecessarily complicated and for having too many rules. However, it is important to realize the necessity of precision of standards in an academic field. The presence of a manual or guide for writing is so important in a field that its absence can actually hinder communication. For example, consider a researcher is writing up a study and after he is finished submits it to a journal. If the journal has its own unique formatting and style guidelines, the researcher will have written the manuscript according to his own understanding of proper writing style. If the journal’s editor then sends it back with corrections, this can be frustrating to the researcher who may feel his time has been wasted and it could even be discouraging if the editor makes many corrections. Now consider foreign or second language students of an academic field and the difficulty they will have understanding and writing according to proper style in a language that is not their native tongue. A strong and consistent style guide can greatly benefit ESL writers as well as native speakers. The level of detail in the APA style allows for a more straightforward and concise communication. With such attention to detail, capability and clarity of communication then increase. Remember that the goal of scientific communication is the attainment of knowledge. Essentially, the easier it is to understand an idea the better it can be tested and thus knowledge can be gained more effectively. APA style is strong in its resolve for this ideal. APA style also makes a paper more readable by using a unique and consistent format which consequently increases the paper’s readability. With the long-standing reputation and the influence the APA publication manual has, it is unlikely that APA style will cease to have an impact on the future of scholarly communication and writing. APA style is not about the past though and the 6th manual shows that the organization is open and willing to adapt to today’s ever-changing world of electronic publication. APA style will continue to move forward and the future will no doubt hold new standards for attaining knowledge and communicating ideas, and APA style will be there to meet those standards.

APA style was first developed in the year 1929 by a group of social scientists who wished to establish sound standards of communication. At that time, these standards were quite simple and basic. Over time, the APA publication manual has come to have great importance and influence in the field of psychology due to the great necessity of more precise standards of communication in that field. What many people don’t know is that APA style’s influence is not limited to the field of psychology and the social sciences. The manual has been in print since 1952 and has secured a strong reputation throughout the academic and applied world in detail beyond psychology and the social sciences to that of consumer and business affairs, law and communications, offering proven solutions to a wide range of problems for more than 50 years. The sixth edition of the APA publication manual contained quite a few changes to the 5th edition, including new guidelines for citing electronic sources, DOIs, using bias-free language, and writing style and tone as well as a new formatting checklist and additional resources for students, early career researchers, and qualitative researchers.

3. Benefits of Using APA Style in Article Reviews

Using APA style in academic writing will help you to achieve in-text and reference citations for the sources you have used, allowing for evidence of your research and critical analysis. This will also help the reader to understand and follow your work, and be able to locate your sources and build on their own research. APA style is usually used for writing in the social sciences, and its changes are claimed to make it easier for the reader to move from a cover page to the content (Barthe, 2001). The abstract is created as a brief summary of the article, allowing the reader to evaluate if they want to read on. Now, you need to include a bit more detail from the abstract in your annotated bibliography. APA Style has specific rules for the use of italics, ellipsis points, parentheses, and verb tense, which help with article reviews to enhance and emphasize the details of the article. It also helps the reader to have a better understanding of the written topic, making the work clearer for the audience to comprehend. By using APA Style, you have an overall structure to follow, and this will be reflected in the points you give when reviewing articles. This helps to prevent you from being side-tracked from the specific topic of the article and effectively summarizes the main points. With APA Style, there are always correct ways to manipulate sentence structures to fully emphasize the details of your reviewing points.

4. Common Mistakes to Avoid in APA Style Article Reviews

When correcting the most common mistakes people make in their paper, our paper is going to be more of a guideline to articles. It will not actually review the articles, but will help you understand what a good review is, and isn’t. The title of our paper is “The Importance of APA Style”. Throughout the paper will be examples of the wrong way and the right way to do something. It will highlight the fact that APA style is used for more than just student papers and a myriad of locations, to show that good form will be good everywhere. Another opportunity was to actually review an article, but we passed that by for the sake of actually getting a review to grade. This paper was edited many times with our mistakes being pointed out by our instructor, proving that good review by the author can better the article. The more familiar and proficient we became with the APA style, the easier it was to recognize mistakes and make the necessary corrections. APA style can be a complicated and frustrating writing style for some, but adhering to strict adherence is essential for precise work. Following APA style throughout an article makes it easy on the reader, as it is structured in a logical manner. Instructions for papers, research, and other written assignments are clear and concise.

5. Conclusion

During a program evaluation of a citizen science research initiative, our research team conducted a study designed to compare the research agenda set by community participants on a given topic to national-level health data indicating areas of disparities. We had thirteen community health workers draw a pie chart according to them what are the major health issues of their community and then make a list of the issues in ordered priority. These were combined and compared with health indicators from state Vital Statistics Reports and data from Healthy People 2010. We found that only certain topics were being addressed by research, resource allocation was not always proportional to the burden of the disease, and some issues were being researched but were not high priorities for the community. This provided ample information on areas to redirect existing research and identify new research that is more participatory and responsive to community-defined information needs. APA Style was useful in creating precise questions to identify the above-mentioned program in the research phase and had also directed the researcher to add a few paragraphs on how APA style had helped in the research process.

This analysis has set out to identify gaps in research in the community, to explore the role of the community and research in defining questions important to stakeholders. It has sought to apply area of discourse analysis to research themes identified by community members and explore the degree to which the research addresses their concerns. This was used as a point of comparison in identifying potential areas for research that are more responsive to community-defined information needs. The result is somewhat of a mixed bag with a largely positive endorsement of the research as being on the right track and still having room for improvement. APA Style, being a standardized format, is used to make it more concise and clear in word choice and word order for the writer and the reader.