APA Personal Communication Citation – Definition & Guide

APA style or format revolves around structuring academic essays or research papers in academic writing. The role of APA is to show the reader or professor the exact source of the content in your paper. According to this style’s guidelines, APA personal communication citation differs from other citation styles.

This write-up provides you with a guide for APA personal communication citation.

FAQs: How to format APA personal communication citation?

The following are some of the most commonly asked questions regarding how to format APA personal communication citation:

Definition: APA personal communication citation

In academic writing, personal communication is defined as works that readers cannot recover. This means that the reader cannot access the data other than what is presented in the document.

You can also use personal communication citation when you cannot provide a recoverable source. Personal communication can also be content from sources that have not been published formally or are only available to a particular group of people.

How to format an APA personal communication citation?

When using the APA referencing format, you do not usually include personal communication in the reference list at the end. As already explained above, this is because the given information cannot be accessed or recovered by the readers. Instead, you have to use in-text citation. The format for APA personal communication citations is pretty straightforward – just add the initials and surname of the communicator and the date of the communication.

Below you can find a few examples of personal communication citation in APA:

J. Michaelson (Personal communication, September 4, 2019) stated that students need to understand the value of referencing in academic and research papers.

In the example above, the citation comes before the information. However, you can also have it the other way, as in the following example:

Referencing your sources in research papers is a mandatory requirement (J. Martin, personal communication, February 19, 2017).

You can also indicate the communicator’s name and the date of the communication on different ends of the statement:

J.D Prince explained that “infections are often contracted during the recovery process in the hospital” (personal communication, May 18, 2018)

If you choose to mention the communicator’s name in the sentence leading into or before the quote or paraphrased content, you do not need to repeat it in the in-text citation.

Extra Tip: You can also include a personal communication statement as a quote or paraphrase.

Take Note:
Sometimes you may use interviews published in journals, websites, magazines, and other publications to source your content. The magazines may cite the content as personal communication. However, in this case, you cannot do the same. Such content is cited as magazine articles. This is because the readers or your professors can easily track down the interviews and recover the content.

Research participants in APA personal communication citations

In APA, it is also recommended that you quote the research participants. This means that you have to include the name of the participant in the APA personal communication citation, whether it is an interview, telephone conversation, email or an unrecorded lecture.

However, it is highly recommended that you abide by any ethical arrangements regarding confidentiality or anonymity, depending on your agreement with your participants. You must clear this up with the participant during the consent or permission process and respect the decision on whether or not you can include their titles or real names in your text as a citation.

In case they do not give consent, you can always disguise their information. This does not mean that you get to exclude them when quoting research participants completely. You can disguise the participant information by assigning pseudonyms, obscure identifying information, or presenting aggregate information.

Down below is an example of an APA personal communication citation where the communicator’s name is disguised:

“It is important to abide by confidentiality rules when quoting participants” a lecturer at the United Lias University, (personal communication, December 13, 2012)

APA personal communication citation in the reference list

As mentioned before, personal communication is not a type of information cited in the reference section. The content included in the reference list is usually of such nature that the reader or the professor, who is grading your paper, can find it themselves, if they want to check the legitimacy of  the presented information. Therefore, including APA personal communication citations in the reference list is not required.

All you need to do is make sure it is still included somewhere in your text and you are done. Here are more examples on how to make in-text citations:

Examples:

G.K. Williams, personal communication, February 15, 2019

or:

G.K. Williams (personal communication, February 15, 2019)