can you use first person in a research paper apa

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Video Transcripts: APA Formatting & Style: Pronouns (Point of View)

Apa formatting & style: pronouns (point of view).

Last updated 5/6/2020

Visual: Screen opens to a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title “Formatting & Style” and the video title “Pronouns.”

Audio: Guitar music

Visual: Slide changes to one with the following: Pronouns

Avoid referring to yourself in the third person

• I will analyze the lesson plan.
• I reviewed the case study.

Audio:  APA provides some guidance on what pronouns are appropriate for writers to use in certain situations, since it often depends on context. The first guideline is that you should avoid referring to yourself in third person. This includes referring to yourself as “the researcher” or “the author”, like in these examples. Instead, APA recommends using first person, in this case “I”, when you’re talking about your own research, actions you’ve taken, or experiences you’ve had. Writers should use this first person instead of the third person, which helps avoid ambiguity.

Visual:  Slide changes to one with the following: Pronouns

Avoid “I think” or “I believe” statements

• Education is a right everyone should have.
• Businesses that treat employees fairly will succeed.

Audio:  However, because we use first person to refer to our own actions or experiences, does not mean we should use “I” whenever we’d like to in our academic writing. Generally, in academic writing the idea is that statements you make are beliefs or thoughts you have, so you should also avoid “I think” or “I believe” statements. The notations that you think or believe something is implied, since you’re the author of that statement, so the phrases can be eliminated altogether. Sometimes students will include “I think” or “I believe” statements because it’s become a habit in their writing. Our recommendation is to allow yourself to do that as you write, but then come back through your paper and simply delete those statements to eliminate them. As you can see with our examples here, by eliminating the “I think” and “I believe” statements altogether, we’re left with clear, declarative sentences.

Avoid referring to the reader with “we” or “you”

• Parents need to ensure students have strong reading skills.
• Teachers need to ensure students have strong reading skills.

Audio:  APA also provides guidance on how to use the third person, specifically the pronoun “we.” APA doesn’t recommend writers use the editorial “we,” which is when individuals refer themselves in the third person with “we.” This editorial “we” can be used in other writing styles, but APA recommends avoiding it to refer to yourself because it’s not necessary. Additionally, APA recommends avoiding using “we” when you’re talking about groups of people you are discussing. In this example, “we” is used to refer to a group that needs to ensure students have strong reading skills, but as readers, we don’t know who “we” includes. The use of the pronoun isn’t very precise, and it could include any number of people. Instead, replacing “we” with the specific group you are referring to will help your writing be more specific and clear. In this case, the writer might have meant “parents” or “teachers.” Both options change the meaning of the sentence, and so by naming the specific group, the writer would make this idea clearer.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Pronouns

Use singular “they” when appropriate:

• When a person uses “they” as their pronoun
• When a person’s gender is unknown or irrelevant
• They turned in the questionnaire.
• Jamie shared their experiences as a genderqueer person.

Audio: The final guidance APA provides for pronouns is around the use of singular “they.” The singular use of the pronoun “they” was once discouraged in academic writing, but it now should be used to be inclusive of all gender identities. You should use the singular “they” when the person you are talking about uses “they” as their pronoun, as well as when a person’s gender is either unknown or irrelevant. In these cases, using “they,” “them,” and “theirs” is appropriate, as shown in these examples.

It may take some practice to become proficient at using these guidelines for pronouns, but with practice, you’ll soon be able to easily navigate which pronoun to use when!  

Visual: The screen changes to an ending slide with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The email address [email protected] appears on the screen.

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• First-Person Pronouns | List, Examples & Explanation

First-Person Pronouns | List, Examples & Explanation

Published on October 17, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 4, 2023.

First-person pronouns are words such as “I” and “us” that refer either to the person who said or wrote them (singular), or to a group including the speaker or writer (plural). Like second- and third-person pronouns , they are a type of personal pronoun .

They’re used without any issue in everyday speech and writing, but there’s an ongoing debate about whether they should be used in academic writing .

There are four types of first-person pronouns—subject, object, possessive, and reflexive—each of which has a singular and a plural form. They’re shown in the table below and explained in more detail in the following sections.

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Table of contents

First-person subject pronouns (“i” and “we”), first-person object pronouns (“me” and “us”), first-person possessive pronouns (“mine” and “ours”), first-person reflexive pronouns (“myself” and “ourselves”), first-person pronouns in academic writing, other interesting language articles, frequently asked questions.

Used as the subject of a verb , the first-person subject pronoun takes the form I (singular) or we (plural). Note that unlike all other pronouns, “I” is invariably capitalized .

A subject is the person or thing that performs the action described by the verb. In most sentences, it appears at the start or after an introductory phrase, just before the verb it is the subject of.

To be honest, we haven’t made much progress.

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Used as the object of a verb or preposition , the first-person object pronoun takes the form me (singular) or us (plural). Objects can be direct or indirect, but the object pronoun should be used in both cases.

• A direct object is the person or thing that is acted upon (e.g., “she threatened us ”).
• An indirect object is the person or thing that benefits from that action (e.g., “Jane gave me a gift”).
• An object pronoun should also be used after a preposition (e.g., “come with me ”).

It makes no difference to me .

Will they tell us where to go?

First-person possessive pronouns are used to represent something that belongs to you. They are mine (singular) and ours (plural).

They are closely related to the first-person possessive determiners my (singular) and our (plural). The difference is that determiners must modify a noun (e.g., “ my book”), while pronouns stand on their own (e.g., “that one is mine ”).

It was a close game, but in the end, victory was ours .

A reflexive pronoun is used instead of an object pronoun when the object of the sentence is the same as the subject. The first-person reflexive pronouns are myself (singular) and ourselves (plural). They occur with reflexive verbs, which describe someone acting upon themselves (e.g., “I wash myself ”).

The same words can also be used as intensive pronouns , in which case they place greater emphasis on the person carrying out the action (e.g., “I’ll do it myself ”).

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While first-person pronouns are used without any problem in most contexts, there’s an ongoing debate about their use in academic writing . They have traditionally been avoided in many academic disciplines for two main reasons:

• To maintain an objective tone
• To keep the focus on the material and not the author

However, the first person is increasingly standard in many types of academic writing. Some style guides, such as APA , require the use of first-person pronouns (and determiners) when referring to your own actions and opinions. The tendency varies based on your field of study:

• The natural sciences and other STEM fields (e.g., medicine, biology, engineering) tend to avoid first-person pronouns, although they accept them more than they used to.
• The social sciences and humanities fields (e.g., sociology, philosophy, literary studies) tend to allow first-person pronouns.

Avoiding first-person pronouns

If you do need to avoid using first-person pronouns (and determiners ) in your writing, there are three main techniques for doing so.

Each technique has different advantages and disadvantages. For example, the passive voice can sometimes result in dangling modifiers that make your text less clear. If you are allowed to use first-person pronouns, retaining them is the best choice.

Using first-person pronouns appropriately

If you’re allowed to use the first person, you still shouldn’t overuse it. First-person pronouns (and determiners ) are used for specific purposes in academic writing.

Avoid arbitrarily inserting your own thoughts and feelings in a way that seems overly subjective and adds nothing to your argument:

• In my opinion, …
• I think that …
• I dislike …

Pronoun consistency

Whether you may or may not refer to yourself in the first person, it’s important to maintain a consistent point of view throughout your text. Don’t shift between the first person (“I,” “we”) and the third person (“the author,” “the researchers”) within your text.

• The researchers interviewed 12 participants, and our results show that all were in agreement.
• We interviewed 12 participants, and our results show that all were in agreement.
• The researchers interviewed 12 participants, and the results show that all were in agreement.

The editorial “we”

Regardless of whether you’re allowed to use the first person in your writing, you should avoid the editorial “we.” This is the use of plural first-person pronouns (or determiners) such as “we” to make a generalization about people. This usage is regarded as overly vague and informal.

Broad generalizations should be avoided, and any generalizations you do need to make should be expressed in a different way, usually with third-person plural pronouns (or occasionally the impersonal pronoun “one”). You also shouldn’t use the second-person pronoun “you” for generalizations.

• When we are given more freedom, we can work more effectively.
• When employees are given more freedom, they can work more effectively.
• As we age, we tend to become less concerned with others’ opinions of us .
• As people age, they tend to become less concerned with others’ opinions of them .

If you want to know more about nouns , pronouns , verbs , and other parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other language articles with explanations and examples.

Nouns & pronouns

• Common nouns
• Collective nouns
• Personal pronouns
• Proper nouns
• Second-person pronouns
• Verb tenses
• Phrasal verbs
• Types of verbs
• Active vs passive voice
• Subject-verb agreement
• Interjections
• Conjunctions
• Prepositions

Yes, the personal pronoun we and the related pronouns us , ours , and ourselves are all first-person. These are the first-person plural pronouns (and our is the first-person plural possessive determiner ).

If you’ve been told not to refer to yourself in the first person in your academic writing , this means you should also avoid the first-person plural terms above . Switching from “I” to “we” is not a way of avoiding the first person, and it’s illogical if you’re writing alone.

If you need to avoid first-person pronouns , you can instead use the passive voice or refer to yourself in the third person as “the author” or “the researcher.”

Personal pronouns are words like “he,” “me,” and “yourselves” that refer to the person you’re addressing, to other people or things, or to yourself. Like other pronouns, they usually stand in for previously mentioned nouns (antecedents).

They are called “personal” not because they always refer to people (e.g., “it” doesn’t) but because they indicate grammatical person ( first , second , or third person). Personal pronouns also change their forms based on number, gender, and grammatical role in a sentence.

In grammar, person is how we distinguish between the speaker or writer (first person), the person being addressed (second person), and any other people, objects, ideas, etc. referred to (third person).

Person is expressed through the different personal pronouns , such as “I” ( first-person pronoun ), “you” ( second-person pronoun ), and “they” (third-person pronoun). It also affects how verbs are conjugated, due to subject-verb agreement (e.g., “I am” vs. “you are”).

In fiction, a first-person narrative is one written directly from the perspective of the protagonist . A third-person narrative describes the protagonist from the perspective of a separate narrator. A second-person narrative (very rare) addresses the reader as if they were the protagonist.

Sources in this article

We strongly encourage students to use sources in their work. You can cite our article (APA Style) or take a deep dive into the articles below.

Caulfield, J. (2023, July 04). First-Person Pronouns | List, Examples & Explanation. Scribbr. Retrieved August 12, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-writing/first-person-pronouns/

Aarts, B. (2011).  Oxford modern English grammar . Oxford University Press.

Butterfield, J. (Ed.). (2015).  Fowler’s dictionary of modern English usage  (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Garner, B. A. (2016).  Garner’s modern English usage (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

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Professionals

A Clear Perspective: First-Person Point of View in APA

First or Third Person in APA?

What point of view should you maintain when writing in the APA style? The answer is more fluid than you might have thought.

Depending on your content, institution’s requirements, and personal style, you may have the option to use either the first-person or third-person perspective. Just remember to keep it consistent when writing your paper in APA.

Here’s some additional advice from the APA Style Blog’s Timothy McAdoo .

Use of First Person in APA Style

I am often asked why APA Style prohibits the use of I or we . I love this question, because the answer is always a pleasant surprise: I or we is perfectly acceptable in APA Style!

Examples of Ambiguity

What types of ambiguity result when an author goes to great lengths to avoid using I or we ? On pages 69–70, the Manual gives three possibilities:

As Smith and Jones (1999) and Drew (2007) noted, there is no correlation between television viewing time and calorie intake. The authors replicated this finding with three experiments.

Does “the authors” refer to both Smith and Jones (1999) and Drew (2007)? Or does it refer to the authors of the current paper? You would likely guess it’s the latter, but the meaning would be clearer with we :

As Smith and Jones (1999) and Drew (2007) noted, there is no correlation between television viewing time and calorie intake. We replicated this finding with three experiments.

• Attempts to avoid first person can also lead to anthropomorphism. As the Manual notes (p. 69), an experiment cannot “attempt to demonstrate,” but I or we can.

But this doesn't mean we must be completely avoided. As the Manual states (p. 70), “ we is an appropriate and useful referent.” You could simply rewrite this sentence, “As psychologists, we categorize anxiety disorders …”

Clarity Is King

It’s not always right, or always wrong, to use the first person. We all have different writing styles, and the use of first person may come more naturally to some than to others.

The most important thing to consider, whether using APA Style or another style, is the clarity and accuracy of each sentence in your text. To quote the Manual one more time, “Make certain that every word means exactly what you intend it to mean” (p. 68).

But: Check With Your Institution

Just one caveat: As always, if you are writing a paper, thesis, or dissertation, your institution may have its own guidelines for the use of first person. The acceptability of first person is sometimes a hot topic, and guidelines vary from one institution to another.

Dissertation committees sometimes advise students to follow APA Style with a list of school-specific exceptions, and the acceptability of first person may be one of these. Likewise, if you are submitting a manuscript for publication, you should always check the publisher’s guidelines.

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APA Style: Writing & Citation

• Voice and Tense
• Clarity of Language

First vs Third Person Pronouns

Editorial "we", singular "they".

• Avoiding Bias
• Periods, Commas, and Semicolons
• APA Citation Examples
• Using Generative AI in Papers & Projects

APA recommends avoiding the use of the third person when referring to your self as the primary investigator or author.  Use the personal pronoun I or we when referring to steps in an experiment.  (see page 120, 4.16 in the APA 7th Edition Manual)

Correct:   We assessed the vality of the experiment design with a literature review.

Incorrect:   The authors assessed the vality of the experiment with a literature review.

Avoid the use of the editorial or universal  we.   The use of  we  can be confusing because it is not clear to the reader who you are referring to in your research.  Substitute the word  we  with a noun, such as researchers, nurses, or students.  Limit the use of the word  we  to refer to yourself and your coauthors. (See page 120 4.17 in the APA 7th edition manual)

Correct:   Humans experience the world as a spectrum of sights, sounds, and smells.

Incorrect:   We experience the world as a spectrum of sights, sounds, and smells .

The Singular "They" refers to a generic third-person singular pronoun.  APA is promoting the use of the singular "they" as a way of being more inclusive and to avoid assumptions about gender.  Many advocacy groups and publishers are now supporting it.  

Observe the following guidelines when addressing issues surrounding third-person pronouns:

• Always use a person's self identified pronoun.
• Use "they" to refer to a person whose gender is not known.
• Do not use a combination forms, such as "(s)he" and "s/he."
• Reword a sentence to avoid using a pronoun, if the gender is not known.
• You can use the forms of  THEY such as  them, their, theirs, and themselves.  
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Note:  This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), which released in October 2019. The equivalent resource for the older APA 6 style  can be found here .

Media Files: APA Sample Student Paper  ,  APA Sample Professional Paper

This resource is enhanced by Acrobat PDF files. Download the free Acrobat Reader

Note: The APA Publication Manual, 7 th Edition specifies different formatting conventions for student  and  professional  papers (i.e., papers written for credit in a course and papers intended for scholarly publication). These differences mostly extend to the title page and running head. Crucially, citation practices do not differ between the two styles of paper.

However, for your convenience, we have provided two versions of our APA 7 sample paper below: one in  student style and one in  professional  style.

Note: For accessibility purposes, we have used "Track Changes" to make comments along the margins of these samples. Those authored by [AF] denote explanations of formatting and [AWC] denote directions for writing and citing in APA 7. 

APA 7 Student Paper:

Apa 7 professional paper:.

APA (7th ed.), Citation Style: General Guidelines

• Introduction to APA
• General Guidelines
• Who (Author)
• When (Publication Date)
• What (Title)
• Where (Publication Information)
• Formatting Author Information
• Citing Personal Communications
• Citing Indirect Sources (secondary sources)
• Citing Sources with Missing Information (author, date, or page numbers)

General APA Style Guidelines

WRITING STYLE

APA format suggests writing in the first person. If you are a sole author, use the pronoun "I". If you are co-authoring a paper, use the pronoun "we". Do NOT refer to yourself or your co-authors in the third person as "the author(s)" or "the researcher(s)."

Be concise and clear

• Avoid vague and misleading statements
• Present information clearly with minimal jargon
• Eliminate unnecessary words/phrases

Style matters

• Write objectively
• Avoid poetic or flowery language
• Make sure subject/verb tenses agree

AVOIDING BIAS

Be sensitive to labels

• Avoid identifying groups by a disorder/disease, condition, etc. Avoid: schizophrenics Preferred: people diagnosed with schizophrenia
• Avoid outdated/inappropriate labels
• When you must label a group, try to use a term that group prefers, and be aware that different people within those groups may prefer different terms.  When in doubt, ask the participants.
• Describe at the appropriate level of specificity. There are times when age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. matter for specific reasons, and when it doesn't. If it doesn't matter, don't use it.

Gender pronouns

• The third person singular use of "they" is recommended to avoid gender/sexual orientation bias, and when that is unknown/ not relevant to what is being discussed/studied. Only use "he/she" sparingly.

Additional Resources

• Daemen Library Web Tutorials - How to Format References in APA Style
• APA Style Blog: In-text Citations
• APA Style- Mechanics of Style
• APA Style Guide: Formatting Quick answers on how to format your running head, margins, heading levels, lists, tables, and more!
• APA Style Guide: References Quick answers on how to format those difficult resources!

Major Paper Sections

Research papers written in APA style include four major sections.  These sections include:

APA style title pages are centered horizontally and vertically.  It consists of the title of your paper, your name and institution.  If instructed, it may also include a course/section number, instructor name, and due date.  The title page should be numbered the first page.  A running head should appear in the upper left-hand corner of your paper.  The running head should be typed in UPPERCASE letters and be no more than 50 characters long.

 HOW TO USE APA

The abstract appears as the second page of your paper.  An abstract is a brief (150 to 250 words) but thorough description of your problem, findings and summaries.  If you performed an experiment, your methodology and findings should be described. 

The components of the main body of your paper will depend on the assignment.  The main body of your paper could describe the problem you are researching, an investigation of previous findings, methodology, results, discussion of results and/or conclusion.  Running head and page numbers are still present in the main body.

References  

The running head and page numbers also continue onto your reference page.  Center the word "References" and continue to use double spacing throughout this page.  References must have a hanging indent and follow the APA formatting described throughout this guide.

APA style, 7th edition requires specific heading formatting.

Sample Papers

APA can be difficult.  The Owl at Purdue provides a great APA sample page to help you visually understand APA style.

To go more in depth, the APA provides sample papers with details notes about many aspects of APA formatting and style.The annotated student papers are available in PDF format; non-annotated ones are also available in Word format.

APA also offers tutorials and webinars on many things APA. Those tutorials can be found here: https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/tutorials-webinars

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Can You Use First-Person Pronouns (I/we) in a Research Paper?

Research writers frequently wonder whether the first person can be used in academic and scientific writing. In truth, for generations, we’ve been discouraged from using “I” and “we” in academic writing simply due to old habits. That’s right—there’s no reason why you can’t use these words! In fact, the academic community used first-person pronouns until the 1920s, when the third person and passive-voice constructions (that is, “boring” writing) were adopted–prominently expressed, for example, in Strunk and White’s classic writing manual “Elements of Style” first published in 1918, that advised writers to place themselves “in the background” and not draw attention to themselves.

In recent decades, however, changing attitudes about the first person in academic writing has led to a paradigm shift, and we have, however, we’ve shifted back to producing active and engaging prose that incorporates the first person.

Can You Use “I” in a Research Paper?

However, “I” and “we” still have some generally accepted pronoun rules writers should follow. For example, the first person is more likely used in the abstract , Introduction section , Discussion section , and Conclusion section of an academic paper while the third person and passive constructions are found in the Methods section and Results section .

In this article, we discuss when you should avoid personal pronouns and when they may enhance your writing.

It’s Okay to Use First-Person Pronouns to:

• clarify meaning by eliminating passive voice constructions;
• establish authority and credibility (e.g., assert ethos, the Aristotelian rhetorical term referring to the personal character);
• express interest in a subject matter (typically found in rapid correspondence);
• establish personal connections with readers, particularly regarding anecdotal or hypothetical situations (common in philosophy, religion, and similar fields, particularly to explore how certain concepts might impact personal life. Additionally, artistic disciplines may also encourage personal perspectives more than other subjects);
• to emphasize or distinguish your perspective while discussing existing literature; and
• to create a conversational tone (rare in academic writing).

The First Person Should Be Avoided When:

• doing so would remove objectivity and give the impression that results or observations are unique to your perspective;
• you wish to maintain an objective tone that would suggest your study minimized biases as best as possible; and
• expressing your thoughts generally (phrases like “I think” are unnecessary because any statement that isn’t cited should be yours).

Usage Examples

The following examples compare the impact of using and avoiding first-person pronouns.

Example 1 (First Person Preferred):

To understand the effects of global warming on coastal regions,  changes in sea levels, storm surge occurrences and precipitation amounts  were examined .

[Note: When a long phrase acts as the subject of a passive-voice construction, the sentence becomes difficult to digest. Additionally, since the author(s) conducted the research, it would be clearer to specifically mention them when discussing the focus of a project.]

We examined  changes in sea levels, storm surge occurrences, and precipitation amounts to understand how global warming impacts coastal regions.

[Note: When describing the focus of a research project, authors often replace “we” with phrases such as “this study” or “this paper.” “We,” however, is acceptable in this context, including for scientific disciplines. In fact, papers published the vast majority of scientific journals these days use “we” to establish an active voice.   Be careful when using “this study” or “this paper” with verbs that clearly couldn’t have performed the action.   For example, “we attempt to demonstrate” works, but “the study attempts to demonstrate” does not; the study is not a person.]

Example 2 (First Person Discouraged):

From the various data points  we have received ,  we observed  that higher frequencies of runoffs from heavy rainfall have occurred in coastal regions where temperatures have increased by at least 0.9°C.

[Note: Introducing personal pronouns when discussing results raises questions regarding the reproducibility of a study. However, mathematics fields generally tolerate phrases such as “in X example, we see…”]

Coastal regions  with temperature increases averaging more than 0.9°C  experienced  higher frequencies of runoffs from heavy rainfall.

[Note: We removed the passive voice and maintained objectivity and assertiveness by specifically identifying the cause-and-effect elements as the actor and recipient of the main action verb. Additionally, in this version, the results appear independent of any person’s perspective.] 

Example 3 (First Person Preferred):

In contrast to the study by Jones et al. (2001), which suggests that milk consumption is safe for adults, the Miller study (2005) revealed the potential hazards of ingesting milk.  The authors confirm  this latter finding.

[Note: “Authors” in the last sentence above is unclear. Does the term refer to Jones et al., Miller, or the authors of the current paper?]

In contrast to the study by Jones et al. (2001), which suggests that milk consumption is safe for adults, the Miller study (2005) revealed the potential hazards of ingesting milk.  We confirm  this latter finding.

[Note: By using “we,” this sentence clarifies the actor and emphasizes the significance of the recent findings reported in this paper. Indeed, “I” and “we” are acceptable in most scientific fields to compare an author’s works with other researchers’ publications. The APA encourages using personal pronouns for this context. The social sciences broaden this scope to allow discussion of personal perspectives, irrespective of comparisons to other literature.]

Other Tips about Using Personal Pronouns

• Avoid starting a sentence with personal pronouns. The beginning of a sentence is a noticeable position that draws readers’ attention. Thus, using personal pronouns as the first one or two words of a sentence will draw unnecessary attention to them (unless, of course, that was your intent).
• Be careful how you define “we.” It should only refer to the authors and never the audience unless your intention is to write a conversational piece rather than a scholarly document! After all, the readers were not involved in analyzing or formulating the conclusions presented in your paper (although, we note that the point of your paper is to persuade readers to reach the same conclusions you did). While this is not a hard-and-fast rule, if you do want to use “we” to refer to a larger class of people, clearly define the term “we” in the sentence. For example, “As researchers, we frequently question…”
• First-person writing is becoming more acceptable under Modern English usage standards; however, the second-person pronoun “you” is still generally unacceptable because it is too casual for academic writing.
• Take all of the above notes with a grain of salt. That is,  double-check your institution or target journal’s author guidelines .  Some organizations may prohibit the use of personal pronouns.
• As an extra tip, before submission, you should always read through the most recent issues of a journal to get a better sense of the editors’ preferred writing styles and conventions.

Wordvice Resources

For more general advice on how to use active and passive voice in research papers, on how to paraphrase , or for a list of useful phrases for academic writing , head over to the Wordvice Academic Resources pages . And for more professional proofreading services , visit our Academic Editing and P aper Editing Services pages.

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Answered By: Kristina Harris Last Updated: Jun 29, 2023     Views: 34317

Use of the first-person singular pronoun "I"

Both Walden and APA allow for and encourage the appropriate use of the first-person pronoun "I" in scholarly writing. However, doctoral capstone abstracts should remain in third person.

Use of the first-person plural pronouns "we," "our," or "us"

The general use of "we," "our," or "us," however, is not acceptable in APA style. By using these pronouns, you may be making assumptions about the reader and allowing a conversational tone that is not scholarly in nature.

Note: The second-person pronoun "you" is also not acceptable in APA style. Similar to general uses of "we," "our," or "us," the second-person "you" assumes information about the reader and could create a combative tone in writing.

Additional Resources:

• For addition information, consult the Form and Style page on Writing in the First Person - Scholarly Voice

Further Questions?

Other questions about your doctoral capstone or the form and style review? Email the Form and Style editors at  [email protected] .

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Kids’ mental health is in crisis. Here’s what psychologists are doing to help

Research is focused on child and teen mental health, exploring why they are struggling and what can be done to help them

Vol. 54 No. 1 Print version: page 63

• Mental Health

[ This article is part of the 2023 Trends Report ]

The Covid -19 pandemic era ushered in a new set of challenges for youth in the United States, leading to a mental health crisis as declared by the United States surgeon general just over a year ago. But U.S. children and teens have been suffering for far longer.

In the 10 years leading up to the pandemic, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness—as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors—increased by about 40% among young people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System .

“We’re seeing really high rates of suicide and depression, and this has been going on for a while,” said psychologist Kimberly Hoagwood, PhD, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. “It certainly got worse during the pandemic.”

In addition to the social isolation and academic disruption nearly all children and teens faced, many also lost caregivers to Covid -19, had a parent lose their job, or were victims of physical or emotional abuse at home.

All these difficulties, on top of growing concerns about social media, mass violence, natural disasters, climate change, and political polarization—not to mention the normal ups and downs of childhood and adolescence—can feel insurmountable for those who work with kids.

“The idea of a ‘mental health crisis’ is really broad. For providers and parents, the term can be anxiety-provoking,” said Melissa Brymer, PhD, who directs terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA–Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “Part of our role is to highlight specific areas that are critical in this discussion.”

Across the field, psychologists are doing just that. In addition to studying the biological, social, and structural contributors to the current situation, they are developing and disseminating solutions to families, in schools, and at the state level. They’re exploring ways to improve clinical training and capacity and working to restructure policies to support the most vulnerable children and teens.

Psychologists were also behind new mental health recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a group of volunteer health professionals who evaluate evidence on various preventive health services. The task force now recommends regular anxiety screenings for youth ages 8 to 18 and regular depression screenings for adolescents ages 12 to 18.

“I see these trends in children’s mental health problems as being critical, but there are solutions,” Hoagwood said. “If we refocus our efforts toward those solutions, we could see some of these tides turn.”

Sources of stress

Across the United States, more than 200,000 children lost a parent or primary caregiver to Covid -19 (“ Covid -19 Orphanhood,” Imperial College London, 2022). In the face of those losses, families had to curtail mourning rituals and goodbye traditions because of social distancing requirements and other public health measures, Brymer said. Many children are still grieving, sometimes while facing added challenges such as moving to a different home or transferring to a new school with unfamiliar peers.

The CDC also reports that during the pandemic, 29% of U.S. high school students had a parent or caregiver who lost their job, 55% were emotionally abused by a parent or caregiver, and 11% were physically abused ( Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey—United States, January–June 2021 , CDC ).

“Schools are crucial for keeping kids safe and connecting them with services, but the pandemic completely disrupted those kinds of supports,” Brymer said.

Those extreme disruptions didn’t affect all young people equally. Echoing pre- Covid -19 trends, the CDC also found that girls, LGBTQ+ youth, and those who have experienced racism were more likely to have poor mental health during the pandemic, said social psychologist Kathleen Ethier, PhD, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.

Contributing factors likely include stigma, discrimination, and online bullying, Ethier said. Female students also report much higher levels of sexual violence than their male peers, which can further harm mental health.

As much hardship as Covid -19 wrought, it’s far from the only factor contributing to the current crisis. Biology also appears to play a role. The age of puberty has been dropping for decades, especially in girls, likely leading to difficulty processing complex feelings and knowing what to do about them ( Eckert-Lind, C., et al., JAMA Pediatrics , Vol. 174, No. 4, 2020 ). In early puberty, regions of the brain linked to emotions and social behavior are developing more quickly than regions responsible for the cognitive control of behavior, such as the prefrontal cortex, Ethier said.

Those developmental changes drive young people to seek attention and approval from their peers . For some, using social media fulfills that need in a healthy way, providing opportunities for connection and validation to youth who may be isolated from peers, geographically or otherwise.

For others, negative messages—including online bullying and unrealistic standards around physical appearance—appear to have a detrimental effect, but more research is needed to understand who is most at risk.

“There is clearly some aspect of young people’s online life that’s contributing [to the mental health crisis], we just don’t know exactly what that is,” said Ethier.

Finally, structural factors that affect millions of U.S. children, including poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, and lack of access to health care and educational opportunities, can lead to stress-response patterns that are known to underlie mental health challenges.

“Even in very young children, prolonged stress can trigger a cycle of emotion-regulation problems, which can in turn lead to anxiety, depression, and behavioral difficulties,” Hoagwood said. “These things are well established, but we’re not doing enough as a field to address them.”

Building capacity in schools

The biggest challenge facing mental health care providers right now, experts say, is a shortage of providers trained to meet the mounting needs of children and adolescents.

“There’s a growing recognition that mental health is just as important as physical health in young people’s development, but that’s happening just as mental health services are under extreme strain,” said clinical psychologist Robin Gurwitch, PhD, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

Schools, for example, are a key way to reach and help children—but a 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that only about half of U.S. public schools offer mental health assessments and even fewer offer treatment services. Psychologists are now ramping up efforts to better equip schools to support student well-being onsite.

Much of that work involves changing policies at the school or district level to provide more support for all students. For example, school connectedness—the degree to which young people feel that adults and peers at school care about them and are invested in their success—is a key contributor to mental health. Youth who felt connected during middle and high school have fewer problems with substance use, mental health, suicidality, and risky sexual behavior as adults ( Steiner, R. J., et al., Pediatrics , Vol. 144, No. 1, 2019 ).

Through its What Works in Schools program , the CDC funds school districts to make changes that research shows foster school connectedness. Those include improving classroom management, implementing service-learning programs for students in their communities, bringing mentors from the community into schools, and making schools safer and more supportive for LGBTQ+ students.

Psychologists are also building training programs to help teachers and other school staff create supportive classrooms and aid students who are in distress. Classroom Wise (Well-Being Information and Strategies for Educators), developed by the Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network and the University of Maryland’s National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH), is a free, flexible online course and resource library that draws on psychological research on social-emotional learning, behavioral regulation, mental health literacy, trauma, and more ( Evidence-Based Components of Classroom Wise (PDF, 205KB), NCSMH, 2021 ).

“We’re using evidence-based practices from child and adolescent mental health but making these strategies readily available for teachers to apply in the classroom,” said clinical psychologist Nancy Lever, PhD, codirector of NCSMH, who helped develop Classroom Wise .

The course incorporates the voices of students and educators and teaches actionable strategies such as how to create rules and routines that make classrooms feel safe and how to model emotional self-regulation. The strategies can be used by anyone who interacts with students, from teachers and administrators to school nurses, coaches, and bus drivers.

“What we need is to build capacity through all of the systems that are part of children’s lives—in families, in schools, in the education of everybody who interacts with children,” said psychologist Ann Masten, PhD, a professor of child development at the University of Minnesota.

Other training efforts focus on the students themselves. Given that preteens and teenagers tend to seek support from their peers before turning to adults, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) created conversation cards to equip kids with basic skills for talking about suicide. The advice, available in English and Spanish, includes how to ask about suicidal thoughts, how to listen without judgment, and when to seek guidance from an adult ( Talking About Suicide With Friends and Peers, NCTSN, 2021 ).

While training people across the school population to spot and address mental health concerns can help reduce the strain on mental health professionals, there will always be a subset of students who need more specialized support.

Telehealth, nearly ubiquitous these days, is one of the best ways to do that. In South Carolina, psychologist Regan Stewart, PhD, and her colleagues colaunched the Telehealth Outreach Program at the Medical University of South Carolina in 2015. Today, nearly every school in the state has telehealth equipment (Wi-Fi and tablets or laptops that kids can use at school or take home) and access to providers (psychology and social work graduate students and clinicians trained in trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy). Students who need services, which are free thanks to grant funding or covered by Medicaid, meet one-on-one with their clinician during the school day or after hours ( American Psychologist , Vol. 75, No. 8, 2020 ).

“We learned a lot about the use of technology during the pandemic,” Ethier said. “At this point, it’s very much a matter of having sufficient resources so more school districts can access those sources of care.”

Expanding the workforce

Limited resources are leaving families low on options, with some young people making multiple trips to the emergency room for mental health-related concerns or spending more than six months on a waiting list for mental health support. That points to a need for more trained emergency responders and psychiatric beds, psychologists say, but also for better upstream screening and prevention to reduce the need for intensive care.

“Just as we need more capacity for psychiatric emergencies in kids, we also need an infusion of knowledge and ordinary strategies to support mental health on the positive side,” Masten said.

In New York, Hoagwood helped launch the state-funded Evidence Based Treatment Dissemination Center in 2006, which offers free training on evidence-based practices for trauma, behavioral and attention problems, anxiety, depression, and more to all mental health professionals who work with children in state-licensed programs, which include foster care, juvenile justice, and school settings, among others. The center provides training on a core set of tools known as PracticeWise ( Chorpita, B. F., & Daleiden E. L., Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , Vol. 77, No. 3, 2009 ). It also offers tailored training based on requests from community agency leaders and clinicians who provide services to children and their families.

Hoagwood, in collaboration with a consortium of family advocates, state officials, and researchers, also helped build and test a state-approved training model and credentialing program for family and youth peer advocates. The peer advocate programs help expand the mental health workforce while giving families access to peers who have similar lived experience ( Psychiatric Services , Vol. 71, No. 5, 2020).

Youth peer advocates are young adults who have personal experience with systems such as foster care, juvenile justice, or state psychiatric care. They work within care teams to provide basic education and emotional support to other youth, such as giving advice on what questions to ask a new mental health practitioner and explaining the differences between psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. Youth peer advocates in New York can now receive college credit for their training in peer specialist work.

“Making community health work into a viable career can also increase diversity among mental health workers and help us address structural racism,” Hoagwood said.

Pediatricians are another group that can provide a first line of defense, drawing on their relationships with parents to destigmatize mental health care.

“Pediatricians are in many ways uniquely positioned to help address the mental health crisis in youth,” said Janine A. Rethy, MD, MPH, division chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “We have the privilege of building long-term relationships with children and their families over many years,” with at least 12 well-child checkups in just the first three years of a child’s life, followed by annual visits.

During these visits, they can watch for warning signs of social and behavioral problems and screen for maternal depression and other issues in parents, which is now recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (PDF, 660KB) . Several new resources provide guidance for integrating mental health care into pediatric practices, including the Behavioral Health Integration Compendium (PDF, 4.1MB) and the Healthy Steps program . But most pediatricians need more education on mental health issues in order to effectively respond, Rethy said—yet another area where psychologists may be able to help. Psychologists can provide direct consultations and training to pediatricians through the Pediatric Mental Health Care Access program.

“The more we can weave mental health knowledge, capacity, and checkpoints into places where parents feel comfortable—like the doctor’s office and at school—the better,” Masten said. “All professionals who work with young people really need the knowledge that’s being generated by psychologists.”

11 emerging trends for 2023

Scientists reach a wider audience

Psychologists take aim at misinformation

Psychological research becomes more inclusive

EDI roles expand

Worker well-being is in demand

Efforts to improve childrens’ mental health increase

Partnerships accelerate progress

Suicide prevention gets a new lifeline

Some faculty exit academia

Venture capitalists shift focus

Psychologists rebrand the field

Further reading

Science shows how to protect kids’ mental health, but it’s being ignored Prinstein, M., & Ethier, K. A., Scientific American , 2022

How pediatricians can help mitigate the mental health crisis Rethy, J. A., & Chawla, E. M., Contemporary Pediatrics , 2022

Review: Structural racism, children’s mental health service systems, and recommendations for policy and practice change Alvarez, K., et al., Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , 2022

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How to cite ChatGPT

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We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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