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WILLIS N. HACKNEY LIBRARY

Political Science

A guide to help you find appropriate resources for academic projects in political science.

Sample APA-Style Papers (7th edition)

The following links provide samples of student-paper formatting in APA's 7th edition style.  The first is from APA's web site; the second is from Purdue OWL's web site.

The following links provide samples of professional-paper formatting in APA's 7th edition style.  The first is from APA's web site; the second is from Purdue OWL's web site.  The formatting of these professional papers is a bit more involved than that of the student sample papers.

Quotations and Paraphrases in APA Style (7th edition)

Formatting an Annotated Bibliography in APA Style (7th edition)

Formatting a Literature Review in APA Style (7th edition)

While APA doesn't itself provide an example of how to format a literature review, it does provide some guidance in its Publication Manual* about the content of a lit review:

Literature Reviews:

  • provide summaries and evaluations of findings/theories in the research literature of a particular discipline or field;
  • may include qualitative, quantitative, or a variety of other types of research;
  • should define and clarify the problem being reviewed;
  • summarize previous research to inform readers of where research stands currently in regard to the problem;
  • identify relationships, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the current literature;
  • suggest next steps or further research needed to move toward solving the problem.  (APA, 2020, Section 1.6, p. 8)

*American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.). American Psychological Association.