Knowing how to cite an interview in APA format correctly is essential for maintaining academic integrity and ensuring your work meets rigorous scholarly standards. This source type, whether it is a personal communication or a published transcript, requires specific formatting that differs from books or journal articles. Mastering these details helps you provide accurate attribution while allowing readers to locate the information you reference.
Understanding the Two Types of Interviews
Before diving into the specific citation rules, it is important to distinguish between the two primary categories you will encounter. A personal interview involves a one-on-one conversation, phone call, or email exchange that is not published or retrievable by the general public. Conversely, a published interview appears in a periodical, book, podcast, or video format, making it accessible to an audience and therefore requiring a different approach to documentation.
Personal or Unpublished Interviews
When citing an interview that you conducted privately and that exists only in your notes or recordings, you do not include it in the reference list. Instead, you document it as an in-text citation only. This method signals to the reader that the information is based on direct communication with the author, which supports the validity of your argument without creating a full entry.
Published or Retrievable Interviews
If the interview is printed in a magazine, featured in a documentary, or available as a podcast episode, it must be included in your reference list. The goal here is to provide enough detail for a reader to find the exact version you consulted. The format will vary slightly depending on whether the interview appears in print, audio, or video media, but the core logic remains consistent: identify the interviewee as the author and the interviewer as the contributor.
Formatting the In-Text Citation
In the body of your paper, the in-text citation for a personal interview is straightforward and follows the logic of other direct sources. You should include the last name of the interviewee and the year of the conversation in parentheses. This parenthetical note usually appears at the end of the sentence containing the borrowed material, immediately before the final punctuation.
Examples of In-Text Citations
For a personal conversation, the reference looks like this: (D. Garcia, personal communication, October 15, 2023). If you are citing a published interview where the interviewee is the author, you would use (AuthorLastName, Year) as you would with any standard source. If you are citing a published interview where someone else conducted the interview, you might reference the source where it was published, such as a journal article containing the transcript.
Constructing the Reference List Entry
For published interviews, the reference list entry is where the specific formatting rules for APA style come into full play. You must capitalize the interviewee’s last name and initials, place the year in parentheses, and use italics or quotation marks to denote the title. The key is to balance the elements so that the reader can easily distinguish between the interviewer and the interviewee.
Examples of Published Interview References
Here are concrete examples to illustrate the correct structure. If D. Garcia authored a book titled *Understanding Modern Psychology* published by Academic Press in 2023, the reference would be: Garcia, D. (2023). *Understanding modern psychology*. Academic Press. For a podcast interview where "The Digital Future" (2024) was conducted by Smith, J., the entry would look like: The digital future. (2024). In *Tech today* (Podcast Episode 12). SoundWave Productions.
