For more information on citations, including how to find automatically generated citations in the databases, which citation generator tools we recommend, and how to read a citation so you can figure out if something is a book, article, report, etc. take a look at our Citation Guide.
As you continue through the research process, your topic will grow and change. In fact, you may find that you want to change your research questions and thesis statement as you do your research. As you find more sources, you’ll want to make notes of where you’ve been in order to get a sense of where you’re going. There are several ways of doing this.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) covers a variety of topics from manuscript preparation and publication to grammar, usage, and documentation.
In the Author-Date System each citation consists of two parts: the text citations, which provides brief identifying information within the text, and the reference list (list of sources used) which provides full bibliographic information.
The OWL at Perdue has a Sample Paper in Author-Date for you to refer to and their main page for Chicago citations can be found here.
APA (American Psychological Association) style is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. This resource, revised according to the 6th edition of the APA manual, offers examples for the general format of APA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the reference page.
The OWL at Purdue has a series of guides for formatting and citing papers using style guides. Search "sample papers" in OWL to find written and correctly cited papers in for your reference.