Citing other APA sources?
The full APA 7 Citation Generator handles books, websites, journal articles, videos, podcasts, and more.
Citing an interview in APA 7 isn't always what students expect — a personal interview is in-text only, never in the reference list. This page explains the rule, gives the right format for each type of interview (personal, published, recorded), and generates the citation. Free, no signup.
Tip: For a published or recorded interview, paste the URL. For a personal interview you conducted, see the prose below — it doesn't go in the reference list.
This is the citation question that catches every student off guard. APA 7's rule depends on whether the interview is recoverable — meaning, can your reader find and access it themselves? If yes, it goes in the reference list. If no, it doesn't. That's why APA splits interviews into three different citation formats, only two of which produce a reference-list entry.
If you conducted the interview yourself for your research and there's no public recording or transcript, APA 7 calls it a personal communication. It only appears in-text. Format:
(F. Lastname, personal communication, October 5, 2023)
Or in narrative: "In a personal interview, F. Lastname (personal communication, October 5, 2023) explained that …". Never include a personal interview in the reference list. APA's reasoning: a reference list is for sources your reader can retrieve and verify; nobody can retrieve your unrecorded conversation.
An interview published in The New Yorker, Time, The Atlantic, or any magazine, newspaper, or journal gets cited as the article it appeared in — using the interviewer (the article author) as the author. The interviewee is named in your text, not in the reference. Example for a published interview:
Remnick, D. (2023, March 24). The Talk of the Town: Conversation with Hannah Arendt. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/…
In your text: "In an interview with David Remnick, Arendt argued …" followed by (Remnick, 2023).
Interview on a podcast, radio show, TV program, or YouTube channel? Cite it like you'd cite that medium. Example for a podcast interview:
Gross, T. (Host). (2023, March 15). Interview with Daniel Kahneman [Audio podcast episode]. In Fresh Air. NPR. https://www.npr.org/…
The host is treated as the author; the interviewee gets mentioned in your prose. The format bracket ([Audio podcast episode], [Video], [Television series episode]) tells the reader what kind of recording.
[Audio podcast episode], [Video], etc.(F. Lastname, personal communication, October 2023).Paste a URL for a published or recorded interview and we read the page metadata to identify the interviewer, publication, and date. The CSL engine renders the appropriate APA 7 format — article, podcast episode, video, etc. — depending on the source type. For personal interviews you conducted, see the in-text format above; nothing goes in the reference list.
APA's rule: the reference list is for sources your reader can retrieve. Personal interviews you conducted aren't recoverable by anyone else, so APA classifies them as personal communications and puts them in-text only. This applies to interviews, emails, phone calls, classroom discussions — anything not publicly archived.
Same as a personal interview — in-text only as personal communication. Format: (F. Lastname, personal communication, October 5, 2023). Doesn't go in the reference list. If the email exchange is later published or archived publicly, cite the published version.
Even with IRB approval, research interviews typically aren't publicly recoverable. Cite them as personal communications in-text only. Many disciplines use participant codes (P1, P2) instead of names to protect anonymity. Your full methodology section should describe the interview process, but individual quotes get the personal communication treatment.
Cite the podcast episode, with the host as the author. Format: Host, F. (Host). (Year, Month Day). Episode title [Audio podcast episode]. In Podcast Name. Producer. URL. The interviewee is mentioned in your prose, not the citation.
If the transcript is publicly available, cite the page where it lives — usually as a webpage or article. Use the publication or website as the source, the date the transcript was published, and the page URL. The interviewee gets mentioned in your prose.
Personal communications don't count toward your reference list. They appear in-text only, so they don't add to your "X sources cited" total. Most professors are aware of this — if you've conducted 12 personal interviews, you can mention that explicitly in your methods section.
The full APA 7 Citation Generator handles books, websites, journal articles, videos, podcasts, and more.
For recorded interviews on a podcast, use the standard APA podcast format. The main Citation Generator has a "Video/Audio" source type that handles podcast formatting.
For a published interview, use the APA Journal Article Citation Generator or the website generator — cite the article, mention the interviewee in prose.
Save every APA citation you generate to your Works Cited library, then export to Word, BibTeX, or RIS.
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