APA is the abbreviation of an American professional association for psychologists, the American Psychological Association. This organization has designed guidelines for source referencing and HAN has chosen this referencing style. The HAN study and multimedia centers can help you with this. In the theme boxes under this tab you will find everything you need to know about APA.
You're ready: you've got a clear topic for your report, your search question and terms narrowed down, and you've found reliable literature..... You start writing and you substantiate your report with the knowledge of others. So you use pieces of text from the sources you found: you copy them literally (quote) or you put them into your own words (paraphrase). In your text you refer to the author(s) and the year(s) between round brackets. And you create a reference list in alphabetical order according to APA guidelines.
Watch out for plagiarism
You can and must use knowledge from experts and scientists. But you are only allowed to do that if you meet a very important condition: you have to reference your sources. In your text and in the corresponding reference list. It is extremely important that you reference your sources. If you don't, you are violating copyright and are guilty of plagiarism. And not only is that punishable, it is also unprofessional to pretend something is your own knowledge when it is not. It is professional when you show who you have gained this knowledge from and the context in which you applied it.
