I contributed the following to the Walden University Writing Centre Facebook Discussion in response to a question pertaining to citing personal communications.  Even if you’re not a Walden University doctoral student, you can appreciate how the Foundations course (first course in all Walden doctoral programmes), RSCH 8100 (introductory Research Theory and Design course), and RSCH 8200 (continuation of research design, aligning quantitative designs with appropriate statistical analyses) develop and refine our academic writing skills. During the initial three months of Foundations, we struggle to find our academic voice, support arguments with scholarly material, and cite it appropriately.  During the second three months, in RSCH 8100, One thing that I found is that during Foundations, everyone is trying to find their–and their prof’s–comfort zones when it comes to citing personal communications or discussion posts. After Foundations, RSCH 8100, and RSCH 8200 discussions, I found that–perhaps due to the awkward URLs for eCollege posts or focusing more on developing the ideas in a response rather than quoting what material the response refers to–actual discussion post and “personal communications” citations were much more infrequent after nine months of posts and responses. (I still believe that more common discussion forum scripts, such as phpBB or vBulletin–which preserve font and formatting codes–would have facilitated learning and applying APA. Being able to format headers, block quotations, reference lists, and bold/italics would have reinforced their appropriate use.) Just to give you an idea of how awkward some Foundations discussion posts were, here’s a quote from an AMDS 8008 post in October, 2009:

The KAM’s could provide the basis of what the student will like to use on the dissertation but since the dissertation is at least 3 years from now how do you know that the theme is still relevant or even if it still your area of interest (Korrapati, 2009). According to Dr. Korrapati (2009), the KAM will allow you to grow and find what is really what will be your research interest. Reference: Korrapati, R. (2009). Walden residency personal consultation. Jacksonville, Fl.

Progressing through RSCH 8100 (Winter, 2010), I suspect that the same post would instead have presented a reference from our research design text (Creswell, in 8100; Frankfort-Nachmias & Nachmias–arguably a more useful text once the introductory material is out of the way, in 8200):

Gagnon, Jansen, and Michael (2008) begin their article with a survey of previous research and use these findings, Creswell (2009) suggests, to propose a series of hypotheses: “Use the literature in a quantitative study deductively, as a basis for advancing research questions or hypotheses.” Whereas qualitative designs often use open-ended techniques to collect data to identify emergent themes, this study proposed a priori hypotheses, appropriate variables to test and model them, and structured surveys to collect these data.

By RSCH 8200 (Spring, 2010), I had become more comfortable simply asserting my interpretation of a concept without relying on direct quotations, supported by citation:

In cases of such extremely disparate distributions, even minimum sample sizes for valid analyses may not even exist; thus, disproportionate stratified sampling is occasionally the most appropriate sampling method (Chakrapani & Deal, 1992).

References Chakrapani, C., & Deal, K. (1992). Marketing Research: Methods and Canadian Practice. Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall Canada, Inc. Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 3rd Edition.Los Angeles: . Sage Publications/MBS, 082008. Gagnon, M. A., Jansen, K. J., & Michael, J. H. (2008). Employee alignment with strategic change: A study of strategy-supportive behaviour among blue-collar employees. Journal of Managerial Issues. XX(4): 425-43.