Students’ Use of AI and Digital Tools for APA Referencing: Patterns and Perceived Understanding

The fast development of electronic instruments such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), online citation generators, and reference management software has led to a growing automation of academic referencing. This quantitative, cross-sectional study examined the use of AI and digital tools for APA referencing among undergraduates at a Malaysian public university and the association between frequency of use and the self-reported understanding of APA referencing. A structured questionnaire was administered to 134 undergraduates from different academic disciplines. Descriptive statistics were used to develop an overall tool usage profile and a Spearman’s rank-order correlation was used to examine the relationship between tool usage frequency and self-reported APA understanding. Results revealed that digitally assisted referencing was widespread with 97.8% (n=131) of respondents using AI or digital applications to generate APA references or in-text citations. AI tools and AI writing assistants (67.9%) were the most commonly used category followed by online citation generators (56.7%) and reference management software (26.1%). Over half of the participants (55.3%) used these technologies “often” or “always”. Although they relied heavily on these tools, students reported relatively high levels of perceived APA understanding (M= 3.81, SD=0.74). A Spearman's correlation indicated a weak but statistically significant positive association between the frequency of tool use and self-reported understanding of APA (rₛ = .209, p = .015). These findings indicate that frequent tool use does not necessarily stem from a lack of APA competence but rather coexists with perceived academic capability. Higher education institutions need to develop critical digital referencing literacy to equip students to evaluate and verify automated outputs.

Artificial Intelligence, APA Referencing, Citation Generators, Digital Literacy, Academic Writing

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