Many research assignments will ask you to support a thesis with well-organized evidence. To do so, you need to develop a research strategy for finding sources, for evaluating sources, and for managing the information you gather.

Some instructors will require that you document your sources with the American Psychological Association (APA) system of in-text citations and references.

APA style is a set of rules and guidelines for writers in the social sciences (psychology, sociology, criminal justice, anthropology, political science) and in business, education, and nursing. Many writing assignments in those fields are either reports of original research or reviews of the literature about a research topic. Other types of papers are lab reports, analytical essays, clinical papers, professional memos, and annotated bibliographies. You will find samples of these types of papers in Writer’s Help.

You face several challenges when writing an APA paper that draws on sources: