When preparing papers and presentations, citations (or references) should be included to provide authority to the ideas and information you are including. It is important to give credit where it is due and also allow your reader or audience to verify the information you are providing.
Citations should be put in:
The format for including these citations will vary depending on your chosen style. Sociology often uses ASA (American Sociological Association) formatting, though other classes may include styles such as APA, Chicago, MLA, or a journal-specific style.
Citations can be generated for a given article or book by the library catalogue, as well as in SocINDEX and other databases.
The library also has the ASA Style Guide (7th edition) on reserve so that you can refer to it for all of your citation needs.
In-text citations in ASA (American Sociological Association) style use the author last name and year to identify the source of the information. The in-text citation is put in parentheses as part of a sentence in your work.
If there are 2 authors use "and" between their last names in your in-text citation.
Example:
Half of sociology students surveyed saw sociology as a practical subject for careers in and outside of sociology (Mitra and Sarabia 2005).
If there are 3 authors, cite all three authors the first time the citation is used, then use et al. for subsequent mentions of the same article.
Example:
1st mention:
... (Raley, Bianchi, and Wang 2012).
2nd mention:
... (Raley et al. 2012).
In ASA style your reference list should be arranged alphabetically by the last name of the first author for each article or other resource you have referenced in-text in your work.
The library catalogue and some databases are able to create ASA references for you, but make sure you check the result, especially after copying and pasting it into your reference section!
The format for referencing an article in ASA style is:
Surname, First Name, and Full name of 2nd author. Year. "Article Title." Journal Name Volume(issue):page range.
Example:
Mitra, Aditi, and Daniel Sarabia. 2005. "Embracing the Sociological Imagination: A Study of University Students’ Perceptions of Sociology." College Student Journal 39(4):637.
If you're referencing an item in a research paper or assignment, you'll need to include a citation to it in your Bibliography, Works Cited, or Reference List. Your instructor may require these citations be formatted in a particular style. The citation tool is useful for generating a citation in a variety of citation styles:
Click the citation button, choose your preferred citation style from the list, and then click the copy the citation to clipboard button:
