Citing Sources
The primary reasons for citing sources in a research paper are to give credit to the authors whose work you have drawn upon and to allow readers to track down your sources, should they wish to do so.
There are many style guides for formatting citations and creating bibliographies. ASA is frequently used in sociology, but you may be called upon to use others.
See the library's citation tools page for further information.
American Sociological Association Style
American Sociologcical Association Style GuideCall Number: Ref Stacks ; HM569 .A54 2014ISBN: 9780912764214Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Citation Tools
- RefWorks This link opens in a new windowRefWorks is an online research management, writing, and collaboration tool designed to help researchers gather, manage, store, and share information and generate citations and bibliographies.
- How To Cite Data (MSU Library)A concise page with helpful tips on citing your data and examples from three official style guides (APA, MLA, and Chicago). Includes information about how to cite tables, datasets, and citing within text. From Michigan State University Libraries.
- ZoteroZotero is a free tool designed to help you gather, manage and share information about books, articles, web pages and other digital objects that you are using in your research, and to generate citations and bibliographies. Zotero is a Mozilla browser plugin. You can choose to gather your data on your hard drive (if you are working mainly from one computer), or on a flash drive or a network (if you frequently access your data at multiple workstations).
