APA 7 In-text Citation Errors

When using the "APA Style 7th edition" style, I found an issue in the in-tect citations. When two references exist with the same first author with different first names but only one has two or more authors, the in-text citaiton is yielding the first initial of the authors name in both iterations.

Example:

References
Ng, T. W., & Feldman, D. C. (2008). The relationship of age to ten dimensions of job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 392–423. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.392

Ng, Y. (2022). Exploring the association between use of conversational artificial intelligence and social capital: Survey evidence from Hong Kong. New Media & Society, 26(3), 1429–1444. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221074047


In-Text Citations:
(Y. Ng, 2022) - This should be (Ng, 2022) since only one of the references lists a single author and the other has multiple.
(T. W. Ng & Feldman, 2008) - This should be (Ng & Feldman, 2008) since only one of the references has two authors.

This is causing me a lot of headaches, as I have many citations in situations like this across many different references spanning across a few hundred pages. If I try to override the values to suppress the authors and manually set the values using the prefix, I run a high risk of having errors later if I add or remove references, and the formats need to change based on the currently cited works. Is there a way to fix this, or should I request a refund and use something else at this point? I was enjoying Zotero, but this is a fundamental error that is forcing me to recheck every citation in the document with each iteration/revision, thus negating the purpose of having a reference manager.
  • You're just incorrect about APA rules and Zotero implements them correctly: APA disambiguates all first authors with the same last name.

    See the short version here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/citing-authors-same-surname

    or the detailed version in 8.20 of the APA Manual
  • edited 15 days ago
    This is interesting because I have been directly informed by the college that it is in error in this scenario; so far as to even note that if I don't fix it I will not be able to continue with my doctoral proposal.


    Note, the following is generated by Scribber, citation machine, and MyBib.com, so why are there fir a t initials in Zotero?

    Bibliography:
    Ng, T. W., & Feldman, D. C. (2008). The relationship of age to ten dimensions of job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 392–423. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.392
    Ng, Y.-L. (2022). Exploring the association between use of conversational artificial intelligence and social capital: Survey evidence from Hong Kong. New Media & Society, 146144482210740. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221074047


    In-Text:
    (Ng & Feldman, 2008)
    (Ng, 2022)
  • They should be very, very embarrassed -- this has been in the APA manual since at least 2009.
    If you do need to comply with incorrect APA style, this should work: https://github.com/bwiernik/zotero-tools/blob/master/apa-no-disambiguation.csl

    Click on"Raw" at the top to install
  • adamsmith,

    Thank you for the APA link that shows this scenario guidance and the style template. I greatly appreciate it. I have passed the information to the institution to try to educate them, but until they are willing to accept it, I will use the style template you graciously provided! You are a lifesaver.
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