APA Citation

APA CITATION AND WHERE TO GO FOR HELP

One of the most common issues I deal with as a teacher is students needing help with APA citation. APA is the citation style used by the American Psychological Association. APA citation is commonly required in many undergraduate and graduate social science programs. I was lucky and had professors that taught me APA early, and they regularly reinforced the importance of properly citing sources. Truly, APA citation is not as difficult as it appears. All it really takes, is practice and repetition. Occasionally, there will be some harder to cite sources that you come across (citing court cases immediately comes to mind), but those are rare and there are resources to help give you quick answers. I will review those resources shortly.

First, I want to warn against using websites or applications that cite material for you. I will not provide links to these sites because they are unreliable and consistently have errors. Plus, any little change in APA style might not be quickly reflected in these applications. In fact, there are some applications that have easy to spot problems that "out" the students using them when I am reading their papers. Plus, you go to college to learn, so you might as well learn APA citation.

So, where can you go for help?

• The best overall source for help with APA citation is without a doubt, the APA Purdue OWL (Purdue Online Writing Lab). I consider the Purdue OWL to be the best source of help for APA citation questions. They provide a user-friendly menu to find solutions for your problems, and also provide a "sample APA paper" that is very useful for comparing to your own research paper.

• Another decent source for help is the APA Style Help page. They also have their own blog.

• A third resource I have found is provided at Baker College's website. They have a useful APA Guide that includes links to APA tutorials and other resources. Again, I warn against using the links they provide for automatic citation applications.

 To conclude, APA may seem difficult to learn, but it is not ac scary as it may initially seem. While you may not ever truly master the citation style, you can easily learn the basics. As always, practice makes perfect. Thank you for reading.

For more information on my education, research interests, and publications, please check out Daniel Kavish on the web. you can also check out a short biography page for Daniel Kavish here.

Labeling Theory Research

What sparked my interest in criminology was the 2009 ASC (American Society of Criminology) article of the year - "The Labeling of Convicted Felons and Its Consequences for Recidivism"by Ted Chiricos, Kelle Barrick, William Bales, and Stephanie Bontrager about labeling theory and deferred adjudication. It challenged me to think about the deficiencies of conventional theories of crime, the possibilities of different alternatives to incarceration, and the consequences of felony convictions on future educational and occupational success.

Other noteworthy labeling theory research:

• Official Labeling, Criminal Embeddedness, and Subsequent Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Labeling Theory (Bernburg, Krohn, & Rivera, 2006) 

• Labeling, life chances, and adult crime: The direct and indirect effects of official intervention in adolescence on crime in early adulthood (Bernburg & Krohn, 2003)

• Interactionist Labeling Formal and Informal Labeling's Effects on Juvenile Delinquency (Kavish, Mullins, & Soto, 2016)

• Reflected appraisals, parental labeling, and delinquency: Specifying a symbolic interactionist theory (Matsueda, 1992) 

• Labeling effects of first juvenile arrests: Secondary deviance and secondary sanctioning (Liberman, Kirk, & Kim, 2014) 

• Unintended Consequences of Being Stopped or Arrested: An Exploration of the Labeling Mechanisms Through Which Police Contact Leads to Subsequent Delinquency (Wiley, Slocum, & Esbensen, 2013)

 Labeling theory is one of the most interesting theories in criminology and criminal justice. Politicians, the media, and general public tend to believe in a philosophy of deterrence. Thus, labeling theory challenges conventional thought and reasoning concerning the criminal justice system. I encourage readers to check out the labeling theory research listed above. These articles provide a great foundation for undergraduate research papers and serve well as assigned reading for courses about juvenile delinquency and criminal justice sanctioning.