Library Assist: Answers

The Fingertips website presents public health profiles covering a range of statistics from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID). Each profile can contain data from a variety of years which can make the webpages confusing to reference.

Important note: the advice below is what the Library team would suggest based on Cite Them Right Harvard guidance. However, Fingertips is a source where lecturers may mark according to their own preferences so you should always follow any instructions specific to your module and/or assignment. 

The full reference should include:

• Organisation name
• Year that the site was published/last updated (in round brackets) - using the copyright date of the page for this part is fine
• Title of web page (in italics) - give as much information as necessary for your reader to be able to locate the information used, e.g. the name of the profile used and the name of the indicator the data is from, with each title description separated by a colon : (in the same way we use a colon to separate the title from the subtitle on a book)
• Available at: URL
• (Accessed: date)

Please see: https://www.citethemrightonline.com/digital-internet/the-internet/web-pages-with-organisations-as-authors?refSystem=HAR (you may need to login via institution if prompted)

Following this template your reference might look something like this:

Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) (2022) Wider determinants of health:  Adults, cycling for travel at least 3 days per week 2019/20. Available at: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/wider-determinants/data#page/0/gid/1938133043/pat/6/par/E12000005/ati/402/are/E08000028/yrr/3/cid/4/tbm/1/page-options/car-do-0 (Accessed: 08 June 2022).

Your in-text citation would then use the organisation and copyright date from the full reference - (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2022) or (OHID, 2022) if you have already previously established the full title of the acronym in your assignment.

If you need to mention the year(s) of the data, build that into your sentence but use the overall publication date for your citation. For example, ‘According to data gathered in 2019/20, 72% of babies in London have... (OHID, 2022).’

What if I have used more than one indicator?

If you have taken information/data from more than one Fingertips webpage (i.e. the URL is different) you will probably have the same author/year combination for more than one of your in-text citations. You will therefore need to add a lower case letter to the publication year so that your reader can tell each source apart in your in-text citations and reference list. If applied strictly, the a b c rule should not be used to distinguish between different statistics drawn from the same webpage; this is because you are still using the same single source for referencing purposes. Depending on the exact page you are using, you may be able to click on an individual indicator to open it in its own webpage and then reference that as a separate source. 

Please see:  'Citing sources published in the same year by the same author' section in the "Setting out citations" entry on Cite Them Right (you may need to login via institution if prompted). 

For example:

• Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (2022a) Title of page 1 in italics. Available at: URL of fingertips page (Accessed: date you viewed this page).
• Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (2022b) Title of page 2 in italics. Available at: URL of fingertips page (Accessed: date you viewed this page).