Creating APA-7 Ready Correlation Tables

Author

Affiliation

Seungju Kim

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Published

02/23/2025

Introduction

One of the most common, and yet painstaking, tasks in writing a manuscript is creating a table (correlation, regression, etc.).

Creating them by hand is not only time-consuming but also error-prone. Even when some softwares (SPSS) allow users to create tables, they are often not APA7 ready.

Today, I introduce a simple package called {apaTables} that will prepare an APA7 ready correlation table (the most commonly reported APA table) in 3 steps AND less than 5 minutes!

Note

This assumes that you have basic familiarity with R.

Step 1: Install {apaTables}

Do not install the package from CRAN, as one of the key features is not available there.

install.packages("remotes")

The following package(s) will be installed:
- remotes [2.5.0]
These packages will be installed into "~/work/follhim.github.io/follhim.github.io/renv/library/linux-ubuntu-noble/R-4.4/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu".

# Installing packages --------------------------------------------------------
- Installing remotes ...                        OK [linked from cache]
Successfully installed 1 package in 7.3 milliseconds.

remotes::install_github("dstanley4/apaTables")

Using github PAT from envvar GITHUB_TOKEN. Use `gitcreds::gitcreds_set()` and unset GITHUB_TOKEN in .Renviron (or elsewhere) if you want to use the more secure git credential store instead.

Skipping install of 'apaTables' from a github remote, the SHA1 (bd45cfd5) has not changed since last install.
  Use `force = TRUE` to force installation

library(apaTables)

Step 2: Load the data

To support maximum reproducibility, I will use the built-in dataset in R called trees.

data(trees)

Tip

If you are using your own dataset, make sure to load it using read_sav() or read_csv().

Step 3: Create the correlation table

Final step!

apa.cor.table(trees, filename = "correlation_table.doc")



Table 0 

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
 

  Variable  N  M     SD    1          2         
  1. Girth  31 13.25 3.14                       
                                                
                                                
                                                
  2. Height 31 76.00 6.37  .52**                
                           [.20, .74]           
                           p = .003             
                                                
  3. Volume 31 30.17 16.44 .97**      .60**     
                           [.93, .98] [.31, .79]
                           p < .001   p < .001  
                                                

Note. N = number of cases. M = mean. SD = standard deviation.
Values in square brackets indicate the 95% confidence interval.
 * indicates p < .05. ** indicates p < .01.

This will create a correlation table in a Word document.

Warning

Note that apa.cor.tables only allows two output options (.doc OR .rtf). However, it is very easy to copy and paste a .doc file into a docx file.

Modify Output.

The full arguments are below.

apa.cor.table(
  trees,
  filename = NA, # (optional) a filename must end in .doc or .rtf
  table.number = 0, # optional, you can add in Word.
  show.conf.interval = TRUE, # Optional, and most would make this FALSE.
  show.sig.stars = TRUE,
  show.pvalue = TRUE, # unfortunately, it will only show ** < .01, which is why you should keep this TRUE to add a third *** for < .001.
  landscape = TRUE
)



Table 0 

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
 

  Variable  N  M     SD    1          2         
  1. Girth  31 13.25 3.14                       
                                                
                                                
                                                
  2. Height 31 76.00 6.37  .52**                
                           [.20, .74]           
                           p = .003             
                                                
  3. Volume 31 30.17 16.44 .97**      .60**     
                           [.93, .98] [.31, .79]
                           p < .001   p < .001  
                                                

Note. N = number of cases. M = mean. SD = standard deviation.
Values in square brackets indicate the 95% confidence interval.
 * indicates p < .05. ** indicates p < .01.

Important

Unfortunately, it will only show * <.05 or ** < .01, which is why you should keep show.pvalue = TRUE to manually add a third *** for < .001.

All done!

Now you can pluck your APA correlation table into your manuscript in 5 minutes!

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Citations

citation()

To cite R in publications use:

  R Core Team (2024). _R: A Language and Environment for Statistical
  Computing_. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
  <https://www.R-project.org/>.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
    author = {{R Core Team}},
    organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
    address = {Vienna, Austria},
    year = {2024},
    url = {https://www.R-project.org/},
  }

We have invested a lot of time and effort in creating R, please cite it
when using it for data analysis. See also 'citation("pkgname")' for
citing R packages.

citation("apaTables")

To cite package 'apaTables' in publications use:

  Stanley D (2023). _apaTables: Create American Psychological
  Association (APA) Style Tables_. R package version 3.0.0, commit
  bd45cfd51891138e805f0fc169c0978c4c6cdfce,
  <https://github.com/dstanley4/apaTables>.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {apaTables: Create American Psychological Association (APA) Style Tables},
    author = {David Stanley},
    year = {2023},
    note = {R package version 3.0.0, commit bd45cfd51891138e805f0fc169c0978c4c6cdfce},
    url = {https://github.com/dstanley4/apaTables},
  }