American Sociological Association Referencing Style Sheet

Although I ask that students read the material on this page, which is sufficient for the purposes of referencing online sources, for a more detailed explanation of ASA (American Sociological Association) style, you may, in addition:

Read the style guide on the American Sociological Association website.
Download this free Windows help file (zipped). I also converted it into PDF format (with no modifications made to the original help file).

However, please follow the instructions contained on this webpage, not on either of the above two sources.

To reference online sources:

In the text of your electronic paper, use the ordinary ASA parenthetical style of referencing. For instance:

(Smith 2002)

For two authors use:

(Smith and Jones 2002)

For three authors, include all three names the first time you cite them:

(Davis, Hamilton and Doe 1999)

If you refer to this same source (with the above three authors) again, do it this way:

(Davis et al. 1999)

For four or more names, do it like this everytime:

(Bernard et al. 2004)

If there is no name given, use what is called institutional authorship. That means to treat the organization or company which produced the website as the author. For instance:

(Society for the Study of Social Problems 1998)

You may have to look around a bit to find the institutional author, but it should be listed somewhere.

As a last resort, you may use the name of the website itself as the author. However, this "approach" is not technically ASA style, so only use it as a last resort.

You may place these parenthetical references wherever they are appropriate in the text of your website (either in the middle or at the end of a sentence). Please note that there is no comma in ASA parenthetical references.

Here is a real parenthetical reference:

(Foster 1993)

At the end of your paper, in a section titled, in caps, REFERENCES, the above source would be listed as follows:

Foster, Mark A. 1993. "A New Typology of Religious Organization." Web page. Retrieved November 15, 2002 (http://markfoster.org/typ.html).

"Retrieved" refers to the actual date you read the web page.

In the REFERENCES section, list all the sources (relating to the parenthetical references in the text of your website) alphabetically by the last name of the author (or the last name of the first author).

What if the year of publication is not available? In both the parenthetical references in the text and in the REFERENCES list (at the end of the paper or website), use n.d. (meaning, no date) in place of the year.

If no author is given, institutional authorship (or, as a last resort, the name of the website) is also used in the REFERENCES section.

All of the sources in the REFERENCES section must be alphabetized by the last name of the author (or the institutional author or, if the author is unknown, the name of the website).

The following information (below the line) comes from a document prepared by the Purdue University Online Writing Lab. None of it directly relates to referencing online sources, but you may read it if you like:

This document may be distributed as long as it is done entirely with all attributions to organizations and authors. Commercial distribution is strictly prohibited. Portions may be copyrighted by other organizations.

This document is part of a collection of instructional materials used in the Purdue University Writing Lab. The online version is part of OWL (Online Writing Lab), a project of the Purdue University Writing Lab, funded by the School of Liberal Arts at Purdue University.

The bibliographical format described here is taken from The American Sociological Review.

References in the Text:

Cite the last name of the author and year of publication. Include page references whenever you think it would help the reader. Later references to the same source are cited in the same way as the first. Quotations in the text should give page references.

If the author's name is in the text, put the date in parentheses:

When Duncan (1959) studied . . . .
If the author's name is not in the text, enclose last name and year in parentheses:

When these relationships were studied (Gouldner 1963)...
Pagination follows the year of publication after a colon:

As tabulated by Kuhn (1970:p.71) the results show . . . .
For joint authors, give both last names:

(Martin and Bailey 1988)...
For three authors, give all last names in the first citation in the text; afterwards use the first name and et al.; for four or more names, use the first author's last name plus et al.:

(Carr, Smith, and Jones 1962)... (Nilson et al. 1962)...
For institutional authorship, supply minimum identification from the beginning of the complete citation:

(U.S. Bureau of the Census 1963:117)...
Separate a series of references with a semicolon and alphabetize:

(Burgess 1968; Marwell et al. 1971)...
For unpublished papers, cite the date. If no date is given, use n.d.:

Jones (n.d.)...
For machine-readable data files, cite authorship and date:

...(Institute for Survey Research 1976).

Footnotes:

Try to avoid footnotes, but if they are necessary, use footnotes to cite materials of limited availability or to add information presented in a table.
In the text, footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the essay with superscript Arabic numerals.
At the end of the paper in a separate section following the references, type the footnotes in numerical order, double-spaced, as a separate section.

References:

References follow the text in a section headed "REFERENCES."

Books

one author:

Mason, Karen. 1974. Women's Labor Force Participation. Research Triangle Park, NC: National Institutes of Health.
collection:

Clausen, John. 1972. "The Life Course of Individuals." Pp. 457-514 in Aging and Society, vol. 3, A Sociology of Stratification, edited by M.W. Riley, M. Johnson, and A. Foner. New York: Russell Sage.

Public Documents

Because the nature of public documents is so varied, the form of entry for documentation cannot be standardized. The essential rule is to provide sufficient information so that the reader can locate the reference easily. For example, see the following:

U.S. Census: U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1990. Characteristics of Population. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
legislation: Court cases and legislative acts follow a format stipulated by legal publishers. The act or case is listed first, followed by volume number, abbreviated title, and the date of the work in which the act or case is found. The volume number is given in Arabic numerals, and the date is parenthesized. Court cases are italicized, but acts are not. For example, see the following:
Higher Education Act of 1965. 79 Stat. (1965).

Kansas. Sessions Laws 1993.

(Because the date is part of this title, it is not placed in parentheses.)

Ok. Rev. Stat. Title 22, Section 60.1.

State vs. Stewart, 763 P.2d 572 (Kan. 1998).
reports:

New York State Department of Labor. 1997. "Annual Labor Area Report: New York City, Fiscal Year 1996" (BLMI Report, No. 28). Albany: New York State Department of Labor.