Sociology Research Guide

Research papers generally build on the work of previous writers and researchers.  When you write a paper and use the material of another author, you must document that source.  Documentation credits the author and publisher of the original work and provides the necessary information for readers to consult the same sources.  Documentation is generally in the form of a bibliography that is a list of works cited at the end of the paper.  

This guide is based on the style rules outlined in the American Sociological Association (ASA) Style Guide (4th edition, 2010).  The ASA Style Guide highlights and features guidelines for the most common situations encountered by authors and editors in the ASA journal publication process.  It is designed to serve as the authoritative reference for writing, submitting, editing, and copy editing manuscripts for ASA journals. 

American Sociological Association. 2010. American Sociological Association Style Guide. 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.

General information

• All text should be 12-point font and double spaced.
• Margins should be at least 1 1/4 inches on all sides.
• Include a title page with the full title of the manuscript, authors' names and institutions (listed vertically if there are more than one), and a complete word count of the document (which includes footnotes and references).
• If an abstract is required, include it on a separate page. Abstracts should be 150-200 words. Keywords describing the paper can be included below the abstract.
• The paper itself should begin on a separate page.

In-text Citations

• Cite the author's last name and year of the publication.
• If the author's name is used in the text, put the date in parentheses.
• If the author's name is not in the text, enclose last name and year in parentheses.
• Indicate short quotes with quotation marks and longer (more than 40 words) quotes by starting a new, single-spaced paragraph.
• Cite the pages after the year of publication (2000:73).

References

• Your references should begin on a page titled References.
• All references should be double-spaced and use a hanging indent.
• All references should be in alphabetical order by first authors’ last names.
• Include first names for all authors, rather than initials, and list all authors of a work.
• For more than one work by the same author, always include the author's full name in each citation.
• Capitalize all words except prepositions such as of, between, through, unless these start a title.
• Capitalize only the first word in hyphenated compound words, unless the second word is a proper noun or adjective

Sources: OWL pages on formatting, in-text citations, and references.

Book with one author.

Author's full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. Book Title in Title Caps and Italicized. Publishing City: Publisher.

Book with Two or More Authors

First author's full name, inverted so that last name appears first, subsequent authors' names, not inverted. Year. Book Title in Title Caps and Italicized. Publishing City: Publisher.

Electronic Book

Author's full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. Book Title in Title Caps and Italicized. Publishing City: Publisher.  Retrieval date including month, day, and year (link to ebook).

Scholarly Journal

Author's full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. “Article Title in Title Caps and in Quotes.” Journal Title in Title Caps and Italicized, Volume Number(Issue Number):page numbers of article.

e-Journal Articles with DOI

Author's full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. “Article Title in Title Caps and in Quotes.” Journal Title in Title Caps and Italicized Volume Number(Issue Number), page numbers of article: doi information.

Magazine or Newspaper

Author's full name, inverted so that last name appears first. Year. “Article Title in Title Caps and in Quotes,”Journal Title in Title Caps and Italicized, Date Month and day, page numbers of article.

Websites

Website author. Date. "Title of the Webpage Cited in Caps and Quotes." Retrieval date including month, day, and year (link to the page).

Notes: When citing a retrieval date, wording should be: Retrieved January 1, 2001.

Sources taken from OWL's reference page.

From OWL: "This resource covers American Sociological Association (ASA) style and includes information about manuscript formatting, in-text citations, formatting the references page, and accepted manuscript writing style. The bibliographical format described here is taken from the American Sociological Association (ASA) Style Guide, 5^th edition."

Hardcopy

American Sociological Association. 2010. American Sociological Association Style Guide. 4th ed. Washington DC: American Sociological Association.  

Online Guide:

The OWL at Purdue University

These OWL resources will help you learn how to use the American Sociological Association (ASA) citation and format style. This section contains resources on in-text citation and the References page, as well as manuscript writing style.

​The Mansfield Library subscribes to RefWorks to make research and citation easier for you. RefWorks is a citation management tool that stores your electronic articles in one place for easy access, organization, citation and sharing. You can save web page content and metadata, create collections to organize or share documents and citations, and upload PDF and Office documents.

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