APA Results Formatter
Format a t, F, χ², or r result in APA 7 style, ready to paste into your write-up.
Statistics take two decimals and keep their leading zero; p and r drop it, because neither can exceed 1. Set the statistic symbol in italics when you paste this into your document.
This formats a result you already have — it does not compute or check it. Enter the exact p-value your software reported rather than a rounded one, so the rounding happens once.
APA 7 reports a test statistic with its degrees of freedom in parentheses, then the exact p-value: t(24) = 2.31, p = .030. Statistics keep their leading zero; p and r drop it, because neither can exceed 1. Anything below .001 is written p < .001.
The rules that trip people up
APA’s statistical formatting is not arbitrary. The leading zero is dropped for any quantity that cannot exceed 1 — p-values, correlations, proportions, alpha, R² — and kept for anything that can, such as t, F, and χ². So p = .030 but t = 2.31, and r = .42 but M = 0.42.
Degrees of freedom go in parentheses immediately after the symbol. An F test carries two: between-groups then within-groups, as F(2, 45). Chi-square is the exception that also carries the sample size: χ²(1, N = 120) = 5.43.
Exact p-values
APA 7 asks for exact p-values to two or three decimal places rather than the older p < .05 convention. The single exception is very small values, reported as p < .001 because further decimals convey nothing meaningful. Never write p = .000, which appears in SPSS output but asserts an impossibility — no p-value is exactly zero.
Worked example
Turning raw output into a sentence:
- 1 Identify the test and its statistic. An independent-samples t-test returned t = 2.3147.
- 2 Round the statistic to two decimals. 2.3147 becomes 2.31, keeping the leading zero if the value were below 1.
- 3 Put the degrees of freedom in parentheses. With 24 degrees of freedom that gives t(24) = 2.31.
- 4 Add the exact p-value without its leading zero. A p of 0.0298 is written p = .030 — two or three decimals, no leading zero.
- 5 Add an effect size. APA expects one wherever possible: t(24) = 2.31, p = .030, d = 0.92.
- 6 Italicise the symbols in your document. The statistic symbols and p are set in italics; the numerals and parentheses are not.
APA 7 formats for common tests
Symbols shown in plain text here; set them in italics in your manuscript. Greek letters such as χ are not italicised.
| Test | Format | Example |
|---|---|---|
| t-test | t(df) = value, p = value | t(24) = 2.31, p = .030 |
| ANOVA | F(df₁, df₂) = value, p = value | F(2, 45) = 4.17, p = .022 |
| Chi-square | χ²(df, N = n) = value, p = value | χ²(1, N = 120) = 5.43, p = .020 |
| Correlation | r(df) = value, p = value | r(38) = .42, p = .008 |
| Very small p | Reported as an inequality | t(58) = 6.02, p < .001 |
| With effect size | Statistic, p, then the effect size | F(2, 45) = 4.17, p = .022, η² = .16 |
What the formatter does not do
This tool formats a result you already have — it does not compute or verify it. Enter the exact p-value your software reported rather than a pre-rounded one, so rounding happens once rather than twice.
Two conventions worth carrying beyond the numbers themselves. Degrees of freedom for a correlation are N − 2, so a sample of 40 gives r(38); people often write the sample size there by mistake. And a result is reported in prose, not as a bare string: “Participants in the training condition scored higher than controls, t(24) = 2.31, p = .030, d = 0.92” communicates the finding, where the statistics alone do not.
Finally, report an effect size wherever one exists. APA 7 treats this as expected rather than optional, because a p-value alone says whether an effect is detectable, not whether it matters.