PREPARING YOUR DISSERTATION
FOR APA REVIEW
Writing Support Services
Copyright Permissions:
First Things First
You will need to obtain copyright permission for most
of the following unless they are publically-owned
materials*:
• Tables
• Figures
• Screenshots
• Lyrics
• Significant blocks of direct quotes (250 + words) from
a published source
*City, county, state and federal sources (e.g., all legislative and public school documents, U.S.
Census Bureau, legal decisions, etc.)
Sample Permission Note
• Sample Permission Request Letter: See UMI doc.
• Sample Permission Table/Figure Note from journal:
From “Facilitating Teaching and Learning Across STEM Fields,” by J. A.
Ejiwale, 2012, Journal of STEM Education: Innovations & Research, 13(3)
p. 89. Copyright 2012 by Institute for STEM Education. Reprinted with
permission.
• Sample Permission Note from book:
The data in column 1 are from The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step
Guide for Students (p. 28), by D. Ridley, 2008, Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Reprinted with permission.
Further Notes About Copyright Permission:
• Get permissions as soon as you know that you’ll be
using others’ tables, figures, etc. Some permissions
can take months to obtain, so don’t wait until you’re
already in APA Review.
• Check copyright policies of each copyright holder
• Place copyright permissions in an appendix.
New . . . Sort of
• All margins in the dissertation are now 1 inch due to
double-sided printing when bound.
• Include IRB approval or permissions letter in
appendix
• No signature page, just the list of your committee
members
• Delete all personal contact information (your own
and that of committee members); professional
contact information is fine.
• Month, year on title page must be month you upload
to UMI.
Preliminary Pages
• Be sure each page is accurately formatted:
– Proper page numbering
• Roman numerals begin on 2nd p. of Table of Contents
• Arabic numerals begin on 1st p. of Chapter One.
– Proper spacing
– Proper order
– Proper capitalization
– Proper date (month, year on title page)
– Check for any updates on the Dissertation Support Web
page: http://services.pepperdine.edu/gsep/dissertation/
– Let’s look at example . . .
Preliminary Pages: Table of Contents
• Capitalization must be upper/lower case
• No italics, bold, etc. in TOC
• Each level of heading from text is indicated by indenting one
tab space to the right.
• Use automatic leaders; don’t manually insert periods from list
to p. # ………………………12
• All page numbers should right align.
• Try using template or ask IT for assistance
• List of Tables—All Titles are Upper and Lower Case.
• List of Figures—All titles are lower case except first letter.
ABSTRACT
• Cannot exceed 350 words.
• 1st paragraph is never indented.
• Use numerals, not words, to indicate numbers in
abstract (unless they begin a sentence).
• No citations or references to literature in the
abstract. Only a summary of your study.
• No bullets or other atypical formatting (uploading to
UMI.
ABSTRACT –cont’d
• Should include the following:
–
–
–
–
–
Overall research problem (1st sentence or two)
Purpose of study
Theoretical foundations
Summarize research questions
Briefly describe overall design, methods, and data analysis
procedures
– Identify key results, one or two conclusions
– Conclude with a statement on implications for positive
social change.
Common Format Errors
•
•
•
•
•
&, and
Numbers vs. words
1990’s or 1990s?
Seriation within a paragraph: (a), (b), and (c).
Seriation as a list:
1.
2.
3.
• Italicize statistical symbols
• Always use DOIs or URLs for electronic sources.
• Secondary sources: According to Smith (as cited by Adams,
2013)
• www.apastyle.org
TABLES
• GSEP’s formatting rules supersede those of APA (see
Dissertation Format Requirements Manual)
• Ask for IT assistance if you can’t do it yourself (or hire
a GSEP-approved editor).