APA Tables
The Basic Premise
Part of your job in writing research papers is to provide enough information that readers can decide if your conclusions make sense. If you are using any statistical procedures—descriptive or inferential— this means a table. In APA style, table design follows some guidelines but the selected design is ultimately based on choosing the clearest, most informative presentation of the information possible. With that in mind, figures (charts and graphs) are always at least one step removed from summary data you may wish to present. Therefore they are almost never used in APA style papers. Figures should only be used if there is no way to present summary data in table form. That rarely occurs.
The Problem
It would be wonderful if there were absolute rules for APA table design. Unfortunately, what APA gives us are guidelines. What is listed on this page are examples to solve specific problems. Remember that you may have to be creative to display your data in the clearest most informative way possible.
For More Information
American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Nicol, A. A. M., & Pexman, P. M. (2010). Presenting your findings: A practical guide for creating tables (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Look for Tables and Figures in the left hand navigation bar.
Tables in Microsoft Word
Table building in Word can be difficult. We have included the following examples as Word documents so that you can copy and paste the table formatting into your own paper. In the long run it would be a good idea to teach yourself the Microsoft Word table commands. If you want help figuring this out there are many tutorials online. Use word tables tutorial as search terms and select one that suits your needs.
Table Examples: these are all MS Word documents
Basic table properties (t-Test examples)
Table for descriptive statistics of survey results