How to Cite an Interview in APA 7

Quick Answer: How to Cite an Interview in APA

Ask whether a reader who is not you can recover the same words. If the interview is in a magazine, newspaper, podcast, radio archive, TV show, transcript, or YouTube video, cite that container and put it in the reference list. If you conducted a private conversation, email, unrecorded call, Instagram Live, or Zoom file that lives only on your laptop, cite it in the text only. If the speaker is a participant in your own study, quote the person in the paper and do not cite the interview at all.

Section 8.7 of the Publication Manual states the three-way split in two sentences this page follows. University pages that restate §8.7, including Notre Dame Australia, open with the same definition.

The same section then tells you how to cite a recoverable interview: use the Chapter 10 format for that source type, not a special interview style.

Which of the Three Interviews Do You Have?

The medium is not the decision. Recoverability is. A Zoom recording sitting only on your laptop is still a personal interview. The same conversation uploaded to YouTube is a published video. A transcript in your appendix is still your own data unless you have placed a recoverable copy where readers can open it. A class recording on Canvas is recoverable for that course paper and unrecoverable for a journal article — that is the §8.8 audience test, not a fourth interview type.

This page is the APA interview workflow. For the same recoverability question across APA, MLA, and Chicago, use How to Cite Personal Communications. For one formatted pair, use How to Cite an Interview in APA.

Personal Interviews: In-Text Only

A personal interview is one you conduct to support a point — an email to an author about a paper, a phone call with a practitioner, an unrecorded conversation. Readers cannot retrieve it, so APA keeps it out of the reference list. The APA Style personal-communications page, reprinted by Alamo Colleges (last updated 29 May 2026), restates §8.9 and expands the list to livestreams and unrecorded webinars.

Two more Style Center sentences, in the Alamo reprint, close the usual escape hatches. Prefer a published source when one exists. Treat an archive as an archive, not as a private inbox.

Those two strings are the handbook's own examples, reprinted on the Style Center and Alamo pages. Copy the pattern, not a first name and not a bare surname. Keep the words personal communication inside the citation. Do not substitute email or interview unless your instructor asks for a local variant. Never add a private email address, phone number, or inbox URL: those details do not make the source recoverable, and they can violate privacy.

• Initials plus surname. T. Nguyen, not Nguyen and not Taylor Nguyen.
• Full date when you have it. Month Day, Year. An approximate date is better than inventing a reference list entry.
• Every mention stands alone. There is no reference list entry to carry the details, so each citation repeats the phrase and the date.
• Prefer a published source. If the same claim later appears in an article, cite the article and drop the personal-communication citation.
• Livestreams count. An Instagram Live or X Spaces session that was not archived is §8.9, not a social-media reference.

Email interviews, texted Q&As, and unrecorded video calls follow the same rule. They become recoverable only when a reader can open the same file: a published transcript, a public recording, or an archived collection. Until then they stay in the text. Classroom lectures that are not recorded belong on the lectures in APA page; unrecorded lectures are personal communications, not interviews.

A recording on Canvas is not automatically a reference

Section 8.8 covers works that only a closed audience can open. If you are writing the course paper and classmates can open the same recorded interview on Canvas, Moodle, or another LMS, cite that file with the Chapter 10 classroom-source format (Example 102): include the LMS name and the login-page URL. If you later reuse the same interview in a thesis, journal article, or any paper whose readers cannot log into that course, drop the reference list entry and cite the conversation as a personal communication. The Alamo PowerPoint and lecture-note reprint of the Style Center classroom page, and the 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples handout, both print the official Mack and Spake Canvas string.

That string is a classroom file example, not an interview script. Copy the LMS name plus login-page URL when you cite a recorded interview the class can open. If the audience cannot log in, Alamo's reprint of the same page is blunt: cite the file as a personal communication.

Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions

Section 8.9 adds a separate path when you learned unrecorded Traditional Knowledge or Oral Traditions of Indigenous Peoples from a person who is not a research participant. The Alamo reprint of the Style Center page is the wording this section follows. Recorded versions — a video, audio file, transcript, book, or article — get a normal reference. The handbook points to Chapter 10, Example 90, for a YouTube recording and Example 95 for a recorded interview. Unrecorded versions use a fuller personal-communication citation that names the person, the nation or group, and location or other relevant context, and only with that person's agreement. Capitalize Elder, Oral Tradition, and Traditional Knowledge. The date is when you consulted the person, not when the knowledge originated.

If you are an Indigenous person sharing your own previously unrecorded Traditional Knowledge or Oral Tradition, describe yourself in the text — the nation you belong to, where you live — and do not use a personal-communication citation or a reference list entry. You are not citing someone else. The Style Center also warns you to examine older published works before citing them: some stories are told only at certain times of year or by certain people.

Research Participant Interviews: Quote, Do Not Cite

This is the rule generic interview templates get backwards. An interview you ran as part of your methods is your data, not a source you retrieved. Section 8.7 says it does not require a citation because you do not cite your own work in the paper that first reports it. Section 8.36 then tells you how to put the words on the page. The APA Style quotations-from-research-participants page, reprinted by Alamo on 29 May 2026, restates the same rule and adds a focus-group example.

Use the ordinary quotation rules: fewer than 40 words inside quotation marks in the sentence; 40 words or more as a block quotation. Name or describe the speaker in the prose (Participant "Julia"), not in a parenthetical citation. Assign a pseudonym, strip identifiers, or report in the aggregate when that is what you promised. Obtain consent to include the material. IRB or ethics-committee terms still govern the interview even though APA gives it no reference list entry. A named expert you interviewed for background, and who is not a study participant, is the personal-communication case above — not this one.

The same confidentiality rule can cover other methods sources. The Alamo reprint of §8.36 says a school policy document quoted in a case study at that school is not cited in the text or listed in the references if doing so would identify the school. You may still discuss the material once it is suitably disguised: "an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia."

• Do not write (Participant 7, personal communication, May 3, 2023) for your own interviewees.
• Do not invent a repository URL for a transcript that lives only in your files.
• Do not put participant names in the reference list to "make the quotes look cited."
• An appendix transcript does not create a recoverable source for outsiders. It is still your data.
• If you later publish the oral history, other writers can then cite that published paper with a normal reference.

Published Interviews Follow the Container

Once the interview is recoverable, stop looking for an interview template. Cite the magazine article, newspaper story, podcast episode, YouTube video, TV broadcast, or archival recording you actually opened. The interviewee often appears in the title or in your sentence rather than in the author slot. That is why the same conversation can look like a periodical on Monday and like a podcast on Tuesday: you cite the version you used.

Magazine or newspaper interview

Chapter 10, Example 15, is a magazine article that happens to be an interview. The journalist is the author. The interviewee is in the title. There is no [Interview] after the title because the article already has one. Italicize the magazine name; use sentence case for the article title; add a DOI or URL. The 19 March 2013 *New Yorker* interview is still live at that address. Royal Roads reprints the same official string from page 320 of the Publication Manual.

A newspaper interview uses the same periodical pattern: the byline author, the story title, the newspaper in italics, and a URL. Do not move the interviewee into the author slot just because you quoted that person. Name them in the sentence. For newspaper punctuation, database stories, and the news-site test, see how to cite a newspaper in APA. Magazine italics and volume numbers live in how to cite a magazine in APA.

Podcast or radio episode

Chapter 10, Example 94, lists the host as author, puts (Host) after the name, uses sentence case for the episode title, adds an episode number in parentheses when the show numbers episodes, and marks the format as [Audio podcast episode]. The series title is italic. The production company comes next, then the URL. The APA Style podcast references page uses the same pattern. The 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples handout adds a later official episode — Santos, L. (Host). (n.d.) — that the APA podcast guide works in full. Worked podcast fields live there, not here.

The This American Life radio-archives URL from the handbook still opens Episode 443. If you are quoting a guest, keep Glass as the author and name the guest in the sentence. The episode is still (Glass, 2011). Do not invent (Guest) or (Interviewee) in the author element unless that is how the source lists the contributor.

The same host-as-author rule is why APA and Chicago disagree on a titled radio interview. Chicago 18 puts the interviewee first. APA 7 puts the host first when you are citing the episode. Joy Buolamwini's 28 November 2023 appearance on NPR's Fresh Air with Tonya Mosley is the interview the Chicago interview guide uses; in APA it is a podcast episode. The NPR page still carries that conversation and still uses the quoted headline If you have a face, you have a place in the conversation about AI.

A current radio or podcast interview is Example 94, not Example 95. Putting the guest first and adding [Interview] is the archival pattern. The live ABC Radio National hour *Suckers for pseudoscience* (23 February 2020) still lists Sana Qadar as presenter. In APA that hour is a podcast episode. Name a guest in the sentence; do not move the guest into the author slot.

Archived radio or oral-history interview

Chapter 10, Example 95, is the exception that looks like MLA: for an interview housed in a digital or physical archive, credit the interviewee as the author and add [Interview] after the title. Two archive names are separated with a semicolon. This is the format for a Studs Terkel recording, a presidential-library oral history, or a Holocaust-museum interview — not for a current podcast episode still on the show's site. Section 8.9, in the Alamo reprint, is explicit that communications recoverable only in an archive are archival materials, not personal communications.

The Studs Terkel Radio Archive still lists the 4 May 1960 broadcast. Write de Beauvoir with a lowercase d, the form the source uses.

The USHMM catalog record for Ann Grauman's 13 April 1983 interview is public. The tape sits in the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive; the museum page notes that staff cannot copy the file for remote researchers. That is still an archival interview (Example 95), not a personal communication. A tape that exists only in your desk drawer is not an archive.

Use [Interview] here because the archival item is the interview. Do not add that bracket to the Bustillos magazine article, the Glass episode, or the Qadar hour. Those works already have ordinary titles.

YouTube, TED, and other uploaded video

Chapter 10, Example 88, is the published-interview case §8.7 points you to when the speaker is not the author. A TED Talk taken from TED's own site lists the speaker as author. The same talk taken from YouTube lists the account that uploaded it — here, TED — so a reader can retrieve that file. Name the speaker in the sentence. Timestamp a quotation with §8.28. The 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples handout prints a later official YouTube string (Above The Noise, 2017) that the APA YouTube guide works in full.

The handbook's follow-on line is the retrieval rule for any uploaded interview, including a YouTube conversation: credit the uploader as author even when they did not create the work, and mention other people who appear in the video in the narrative.

Who Belongs in the Author Slot

APA is not MLA. MLA 9 usually treats the person being interviewed as the author. APA 7 treats the author as the person or group responsible for the recoverable work, except in the archival-interview case.

In-Text Citations for Published Interviews

Published interviews use ordinary author-date citations. The year in the text is only the year, even when the reference list carries a month and day. Personal communications are the exception: they keep the full date because there is no reference list entry.

To point at a moment in audio or video, add a timestamp after the year: (TED, 2012, 1:12). Section 8.28 covers quotations from sources without page numbers. Do not put the interview questions in the citation. If a question matters, quote it in the prose.

When You Only Read the Interview in Another Paper

If you did not open the interview itself — you found the quotation in a journal article, a textbook, or a literature review — do not invent a reference for the interview. APA 7 §8.6 cites the work you actually read and names the original speaker with as cited in. Only the work you opened goes in the reference list. Get the original interview when you can. The full cross-style map is How to Cite a Secondary Source.

Mistakes Students Make With APA Interviews

Creating a reference entry for a personal interview

The most common error is a reference that begins Smith, J. (2025, January 15). Personal interview. APA 7 does not have that format. If readers cannot open the same conversation, the citation stays in the text. If they can, cite the published container instead.

Calling a published interview a personal communication

A Fresh Air episode, a New Yorker Q&A, and a YouTube TED Talk are recoverable. They belong in the reference list. Section 8.9 is explicit: use a personal communication citation only when a recoverable source is not available.

Adding [Interview] to every title

Bracketed descriptions name the format when the title does not. Example 95 needs [Interview]. Example 94 needs [Audio podcast episode]. Example 88 needs [Video]. Example 15 needs none of those, because it is already a magazine article with a title. Copying [Interview] onto every published conversation is a tell that the citation was generated from a fake interview template.

Always listing the interviewer, or always listing the interviewee

Neither instinct is an APA rule. The author is the person or group responsible for the recoverable file, except in archival interviews. Name the other party in the sentence when the reader needs that person. A current radio hour that puts the guest first with [Interview] has borrowed the archival pattern.

Using only the year for a personal communication

Section 8.9 asks for as exact a date as possible. (T. Nguyen, personal communication, 2020) is weaker than the handbook's February 24, 2020 example. A missing day is not a reason to manufacture a reference list entry.

Citing your own participants as personal communications

Section 8.9 forbids it; §8.36 replaces it. Quote the participant, keep the ethics agreement, and leave both the reference list and the personal-communication phrase alone.

Treating a Canvas recording as unpublished forever

For the class that can open the file, §8.8 wants a Chapter 10 classroom reference. For readers who cannot log in, the same file becomes a personal communication. The interview did not change. The audience did.

A Short Checklist Before You Format

Related Guides

• How to Cite Personal Communications
• How to Cite an Interview in MLA
• How to Cite Interviews in Chicago
• How to Cite a Secondary Source
• How to Cite Podcasts in APA
• How to Cite YouTube Videos in APA
• How to Cite Lectures in APA
• How to Cite a Newspaper in APA
• How to Cite an Interview in APA (single pair)