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Citation Station Online

American Sociological Association

ASA Citation Style is maintained by the American Sociological Association and is used in journals published by the ASA. For more reference and citation information, please look at the Quick Tips for ASA Style sheet.

ASA Guidance

Organize your ASA References in alphabetical order by the author's last name. For multiple references by the same author, order them chronologically by the year. References should have a hanging indent (the first line is not indented, and all additional lines are indented .5 inches).

In-text citations are included in the (Author Year) format. If there are two or three authors, include all authors' names separated by commas with the word "and" before the last author. If there are four or more authors, include only the first author's name followed by "et al." If the author's name is referenced in the text, you only need to include the year in the parentheses. If direct quotation is being used from a source, include a page number in the citation separated by a colon. Some in-text citation examples:

  • (Davis 2005)
  • (Orol 2010:1)
  • (Danzinger and Ratner 2010)
  • (Mortimer et al. 2005)
  • ... Giddens (1991) argues that ...

Book

The first author's name should be inverted (Last Name, First Name) while all other authors should be written in regular order. Every author should be listed in the bibliographic entry, and appreviations should only be used if they are used in the original resource.

Examples:

Berlin, Gorden, and Andrew Sum. 1988. Toward a More Perfect Union: Basic Skills, Poor Families, and Our Economic Future. New York: Ford Foundation.

Edin, Kathryn, and Maria Kefalas. 2005. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chapters from Books

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

Journal Articles

Goodman, Leo A. 1947. “The Analysis of Systems of Qualitative Variables When Some of the Variables Are Unobservable. Part I – A Modified Latent Structure Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 79:1179-259.

O’Leary, Alan, and Dana Renga. 2020. "Teaching Italian Film and Television and Videographic Criticism." Italianist 40: 296-309.

Electronic Resources

Articles read online should include the date retrieved followed by a URL. If an article includes a DOI, the bibliographic entry should include it.

American Sociological Association. 1997. “Call for Help: Social Science Knowledge on Race, Racism, and Race Relations” (ASA Action Alert, October 15). Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Retrieved October 15, 1997 (http://www.asanet.org/racecall.htm).

Persell, Caroline Hodges, Kathryn M. Pfeiffer, and Ali Syed. 2008. "How Sociological Leaders Teach: Some Key Principles." Teaching Sociology 36(2):108–24. doi:10.1177/009055X0803600202.

Schafer, Daniel W., and Fred L. Ramsey. 2003. "Teaching the Craft of Data Analysis." Journal of Statistics Education 11(1). Retrieved July 11, 2010 (http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v11n1/shafer.html).