An investigation of APA citation style skills of international students studying at Unitec Institute of Technology

Many university and polytechnic students in New Zealand are asked to use APA citation style in theirwriting assignments. However, a literature review on major works published in the last 10 years foundno studies examining how well New Zealand students handle APA style. Moreover, in my daily work inan academic library, I have noticed many of our students have difficulties in formatting papers usingAPA style.Taking a different approach, this research used a specifically designed test to probe for the mostcommon problems students face with formatting APA reference list and in-text citation. This approachwas based on the following considerations: (a) to facilitate a quantitative comparison and analysis ofeach APA element; (2) to verify this research approach, which was hardly used before. Special attentionwas paid to digital resources (e.g., blog post, video stream, etc.) to reflect a growing digital academicand research environment. Furthermore, this test has a strong focus on information resourcesrelevant to New Zealand.The research findings show that students’ APA style skills remained at the basic level. They had someideas about the rules, but did not comply with many of them. One significant finding is that theylacked the skills to judge the nature of information sources. Students generally performed well withthose information resources with which they are familiar. The research findings provide a snapshot onhow a sample of international students performed regarding APA style, and may inform the design ofa future APA style training session.