The 4th edition is somewhat changed from the 3rd edition, and the 5th edition is little changed from the 4th, so the economist in me says that it pays to buy the less expensive and just as useful 4th edition.

In conclusion, this is actually a useful book, though it is less than optimally organized and not exactly a page-turner. Still, if you are in the social sciences, you have to use it, and use it you will. Get past all the "my gawd, I can't believe how fast 5 years flew by, I'm out of extensions and all of a sudden my paper is due" frustrations. Get a copy, learn how to use it and use it well - just like you've done with a million other less than user-friendly, yet essential references.

Good luck!


Here we go again!   February 19, 2002
 45 out of 47 found this review helpful

Here we go again... more minor changes to APA style! The hanging indent is back, we don't have to type long lists of author names anymore, and we can now use parentheses (woo-hoo!).

If you need to prepare manuscripts in APA style and don't have a previous edition of the manual, then you need this book. Though it remains relatively user-unfriendly, it is nonetheless the bible of manuscript preparation.

If you already have the fourth edition... determine how many of the changes in the fifth edition apply to your work. If you mostly write "plain vanilla" research reports and your reference lists mostly consist of ordinary journal articles, you may be able to get by with some handwritten notes in the margins of your old book.


Small changes, big headaches   October 15, 2001
 26 out of 26 found this review helpful

As an ABD-PhD candidate who's required to use APA format (and halfway through a dissertation using APA 4th edition), the small changes in this latest edition do little to add clarity and readability to a manuscript, but much to frustrate: Underlining references has been replaced with italics; after utilizing first-line indents in a Reference list (easier for a word processor) we've now gone back to second-line hanging indents; and none of these changes are clearly discussed in a "Revisions in the 5th Edition" chapter, you need to find them on your own in each chapter. I appreciate the updated guide for citing electronic resources, but the remainder seems to be aimed at "buy yet-another version" rather than major improvements and substantive changes. Maddening! If you're required to use it, you're stuck. Otherwise, keep the old 4th edition.


"Unashamedly prescriptive"   May 2, 2000
 25 out of 77 found this review helpful

A Danish professor in psychology, Franz From, once said about this manual that if he had to follow these rules, he would not be able to contribute to psychology. Franz From represented phenomenological psychology, which did not consider American behaviorism to be an ideal, contrary to. It is well known that there exist different approaches in psychology and the social sciences. Few people consider, however, that this is not restricted to the choice of methods and subject matter, but also concerns the way papers are written and the scientific communication system is designed. In a way it is paradoxical, that a manual on how to write psychological papers do not consider psychological and related research on the writing process. The most valuable critique about this manual comes from people who are connected to COMPOSITION STUDIES, e.g. Charles Bazerman (1988) and the psychologist Douglas Vipond (1993). There have also been a debate on this manual in American Psychologist.

The view, that there are objective, neutral rules for human behavior (incl. doing research and writing) can be termed positivism. The opposite view, that such rules have consequences for what can be done (and therefore implicit priorities for what should be done) can be termed non-positivism. In my view positivism simply can be proved wrong. If we are going to advance psychology or other (social) sciences we should not built on wrong premises. My own professional interest in this manual, and in the epistemological debate about this manual is connected to my research in information science. Information science is about storage and retrieval of documents, texts and "information". In the coming age of full text electronic documents we have to know as much as possible about their composition, and the factors, that influences the way they are composed. Here I find composition studies to be one important contributor.

Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Hjorland, B. (1997). Information seeking ans subject representation. An activity theoretical approach to information science. Westport, Connecticut & London: Greenwood Press.

Vipond, D. (1993). Writing and Psychology. Understanding writing and its teaching from the perspective of composition studies. Westport, Connecticut & London: Praeger.