APA Citation

General information

In your scholarly work, you are encouraged to cite sources that report original content (primary sources) directly, rather than citing them by using sources that cite those original sources (secondary sources).

• Whenever possible, find the primary source, read it, and cite it directly rather than citing a secondary source. For example, rather than citing an instructor’s lecture or a textbook or encyclopedia that in turn cites original research, find, read, and cite the original research directly (unless an instructor has directed you to do otherwise)
• You may need to cite secondary sources if the original work is out of print, unavailable, or available only in a language that you do not understand

Secondary source citations

Scenario

Let's say there are results of an original study by Denton et al. that you want to cite, but you read about these study results in a book by Beaujot & Kerr. You could not find the original study by Denton et al. to quote or paraphrase from it directly, so you need to do a secondary source citation.

What you need to do 

Reference list entry: provide the citation of the source you are using, i.e. the book by Beaujot & Kerr.

Beaujot, R., & Kerr, D. (Eds.) (2007). The changing face of Canada: Essential readings in population. Canadian Scholars' Press.

In-text citations: name the original source and provide a citation for the source you use, for example: 

According to Denton et al., .... (as cited in Beaujot & Kerr, 2007). 

One study found ... (Denton et al., as cited in Beaujot & Kerr, 2007). 

Denton et al. (as cited in Beaujot & Kerr, 2007) found that ... 

When you are quoting something and the quote contains a citation within the quote, you can just cite as usual. The reason is that it would not really be possible to use the "cited in" structure. Here is an example:

Actors "are encouraged to become immersed in a character's life (Stanislavski, 1950), an activity that calls for absorption" (Panero et al., 2016, p. 234).

In the above example you are quoting the entire portion that is in red, which consists of:

• what Stanislavski said (and what Panero paraphrased: are encouraged to become immersed in a characters's life)
• what Panero said (an activity that calls for absorption)

You are taking this quote from your source, which is Panero et al.

However, if you were to only use the first part, i.e. "are encouraged to become immersed in a character's life", then you would use the cited in structure as you would only be citing what Stanislavski said:

According to Stanislavski, actors "are encouraged to become immersed in a character's life" (as cited in Panero et al., 2016, p. 234).

Actors are "encouraged to become immersed in a character's life" (Stanislavski; as cited in Panero et al. 2016, p. 234).

In your reference list, you would again put your source, i.e. Panero et al.

Reference: 

Panero, M. E., Goldstein, T. R., Rosenberg, R., Hughes, H., & Winner, E. (2016). Do actors possess traits associated with high hypnotizability? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 10(2), 233-239. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000044