APA 7 Format for a Philippine Thesis: Title Page, Approval Sheet, Margins and Headings (2026)

APA 7th edition governs how your text looks: one-inch margins, double spacing, an accessible font used consistently, and five ranked heading levels. It says almost nothing about the pages a Philippine thesis puts in front of Chapter 1. The title page as your school wants it, the approval sheet, the certification of originality and the order of the preliminary pages come from your own research manual, not from APA. Getting a manuscript through the format check means applying both documents and knowing which one wins where.

The two rule books, and which one wins

Almost every format rejection in a Philippine thesis comes from treating one document as if it were both. It is worth being blunt about the division of labour.

Where the two collide, the research manual wins. It is the document your panel was given, and the one the research office checks against. APA is what it defers to for everything it does not cover.

The page setup APA 7 specifies

These are the settings the Publication Manual actually states, and they are the ones to apply unless your manual says otherwise in writing.

Two of these catch Filipino students out. The first is the font list: APA 7 no longer prescribes a single typeface, so a panel member who insists on 12-point Times New Roman is enforcing a departmental rule, not APA. Ask for it in writing and then follow it, because that is the rule that will be checked. The second is the running head. APA 7 removed it from student papers entirely, but many Philippine manuals were written against APA 6 and still ask for one. If your manual asks, put it in.

A margin note that matters for binding: some departments require a wider left margin, often 1.5 inches, so text is not swallowed by the spine. That instruction overrides the APA inch. It is a binding requirement, not a style one.

The front matter a Philippine thesis carries, in order

APA 7 recognises a title page, an abstract, the main body and the references. A Philippine thesis carries considerably more in front, and the order is set by your school. If the five-chapter skeleton underneath is still unfamiliar, start with what Chapters 1 to 5 contain and come back to the layout afterwards. The pattern below is the one most Philippine manuscripts follow, and each row names who decides it.

Preliminary pages are conventionally numbered in lowercase Roman numerals, with Arabic numbering restarting at the first page of Chapter 1. Whether the title page itself carries a visible numeral is a manual-level decision.

The table of contents is worth one sentence of warning. If you build your chapters with real Word heading styles, the contents page generates itself and regenerates after every revision. If you type it by hand, it will be wrong within a week, and a contents page whose page numbers do not match the manuscript is the single fastest way to have a submission handed back unread.

The title page, written out

APA 7 asks a student title page for the title, the authors, the affiliation, the course, the instructor and the due date. A Philippine thesis replaces the last three with the degree, the college and the submission date, and adds the phrase that states what the manuscript is for. The shape below is the common one; the exact wording is your manual’s to give.

PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY AND GUEST SATISFACTION IN SELECTED BEACH RESORTS IN ILOILO PROVINCE

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the College of Hospitality Management
[Name of University]
[City]

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management

by
Dela Cruz, Maria Isabel S.
Ramos, John Paolo B.
Villanueva, Kristine Joy A.

March 2026

Three things go wrong on this page more often than anything else. Titles are set in all capitals in most manuals but in title case under APA, and the manual wins. Names are listed in the order the group agreed and registered with the adviser, not alphabetically by accident. And the date is the month of submission or of the final defence, whichever your manual names, not the date you happen to be printing.

The approval sheet

The approval sheet is the page APA has nothing to say about and the page a research office checks first. It records that a named panel accepted a named manuscript on a named date, and it is the reason an otherwise finished thesis sits unaccepted for a week.

APPROVAL SHEET

This thesis entitled “PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY AND GUEST SATISFACTION IN SELECTED BEACH RESORTS IN ILOILO PROVINCE”, prepared and submitted by Maria Isabel S. Dela Cruz, John Paolo B. Ramos and Kristine Joy A. Villanueva, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management, is hereby recommended for oral examination.

_______________________
Adviser

Approved by the Committee on Oral Examination with a grade of ____.

_______________________
Chair

_______________________   _______________________
Member             Member

Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management.

_______________________
Dean

Date: _______________

Get the panel’s names, spellings and titles from the department secretary rather than from memory. A misspelled panellist’s name is a reprint, and reprints cost days when the signing window is short. Bring the sheet already typed to the defence, because the signatures are collected in the room and chasing four people afterwards can take a fortnight.

The five heading levels, mapped to Chapters 1 to 5

APA 7 gives five ranked heading levels. You use as many as your structure needs, always starting at Level 1 and never skipping a level.

Applied to a Philippine manuscript, the mapping is straightforward, and it is easiest to see against a chapter whose sections are fixed, such as Chapter 3 section by section. The chapter title takes Level 1. The named sections inside the chapter take Level 2. Anything that subdivides a section takes Level 3.

Two rules people break without noticing. Headings are never numbered or lettered in APA, so “3.1 Research Design” is not APA formatting even though many Philippine manuals ask for it, and if yours does, follow the manual. And under APA the introduction takes no heading of its own, because the title above it already serves as the Level 1 heading. In a five-chapter manuscript the chapter title plays that role, which is why the sections of Chapter 1, section by section sit at Level 2 rather than Level 1.

Certain pages carry what APA calls section labels rather than headings: the word Abstract, the paper title at the top of the body, References, Footnotes and each Appendix. These are bold and centred on their own line at the top of a fresh page.

What the format check actually catches

The research office is not reading your findings. It is running a short, mechanical list, and it is the same list every semester.

1. The contents page does not match the manuscript. Regenerate it after the last revision, never before.
2. A table or figure is not numbered and titled in APA form. Every table needs a number, an italic title above it and a note below where one is needed; figures follow the same pattern. This is the rule that catches the research paradigm, which is a figure and must be numbered as one.
3. The reference list and the in-text citations do not agree. Every in-text citation needs an entry, every entry needs at least one in-text citation, and the list is alphabetical with a hanging indent.
4. Spacing is inconsistent. Usually because block quotations, table text or the reference list were pasted in at single spacing.
5. The abstract runs over the word ceiling. The ceiling is your manual’s, and it is checked.
6. Appendices are referred to but missing. The instrument, the validation sheets and the permission letters all belong there.

Notice how much of that is citation work rather than layout work. If your reference list was assembled the night before submission, it will fail this check; the seven recurring errors are set out in the piece on what free APA citation generators get wrong. If you are on a capstone project rather than a thesis, first settle which style governs you at all, because APA and IEEE reverse each other on the point that matters most.

Where to find your school’s binding document

There is no national Philippine thesis format. CHED sets programme standards, not manuscript layout, and each university publishes its own manual. Most are not on the public web, which is precisely why students end up formatting from a blog post and reformatting twice. Four places hold the real one.

1. Your department or college research manual. The binding document. Ask the research coordinator for the current edition and check the year on the cover, because departments revise these quietly.
2. Your school’s downloadable template. Many departments issue a Word file with the styles already set. Using it removes the entire layout problem in one step.
3. The university library’s deposit guidelines. These govern what the final copy must contain. At UP Diliman, for instance, access to deposited theses and dissertations runs under the University Library’s Revised Policy on Access to Theses and Dissertations (2017), which is grounded in Republic Act No. 10055, the Technology Transfer Act of 2009, and the Revised Intellectual Property Policy of the UP System (2011). Your own library will have an equivalent, and it decides what happens to your manuscript after you submit it.
4. Last year’s approved thesis from your own department. The most reliable informal source there is. Borrow a bound copy from the department shelf and copy its front matter exactly.

If the manual and the template disagree, ask the research coordinator which is current and get the answer in writing. That single message has saved more reprints than any style guide.

Get the manuscript into shape before the format check

Formatting is only cheap when the content underneath it is stable. If Chapter 2 is still thin or Chapter 3 is still being argued about, every layout pass you do now will be thrown away. Tesify drafts from your own outline, your own data and your own sources, keeps the references consistent as you write rather than at the end, and leaves the thesis entirely yours. Over 9,000 students have used it to get chapters out of the blank page and into a state a panel can read.

Start your chapter free on Tesify

Frequently asked questions

Does APA 7 require 12-point Times New Roman?

No. APA 7 requires an accessible font used consistently and recommends several, including 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, 11-point Georgia, 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode and 10-point Computer Modern. If your department insists on one of them, that is a departmental rule and you should follow it.

What margins does a Philippine thesis use?

APA 7 specifies one inch on all four sides. Many Philippine departments widen the left margin for binding. Your research manual decides, and its instruction overrides the APA default.

Do I still need a running head?

Under APA 7, student papers carry the page number only; the running head is for professional papers. Some Philippine manuals were written against APA 6 and still ask for one. Follow your manual.

Is there a standard Philippine approval sheet?

There is no national standard. The wording, the signatories and the layout are set by your department. Get the current version from your research coordinator or copy it from an approved thesis in your own department.

Should chapter headings be numbered, like 3.1 and 3.2?

Not under APA, which ranks headings by format rather than by number. Several Philippine manuals ask for numbering anyway. When they do, the manual wins.

Where does the research paradigm go, and how is it labelled?

It is a figure. It carries a figure number, an italic title above it and a note below if the reader needs one, and it is listed in the list of figures. It normally sits in Chapter 1 or Chapter 2, wherever your manual places the conceptual framework.

How long should the abstract be?

APA 7 treats the abstract as a single paragraph. The word ceiling is your manual’s, and it is one of the things the format check measures, so find the number before you write it.

Do the preliminary pages use Roman numerals?

Conventionally yes, with Arabic numbering restarting at the first page of Chapter 1. Whether the title page itself shows a numeral is decided by your manual.

Can I format the whole thesis at the end?

You can, but it is the most expensive way to do it. Building the manuscript with real heading styles from Chapter 1 onward makes the table of contents, the list of tables and the list of figures generate themselves, and it is the difference between a thirty-minute format pass and a weekend.

Which is checked first, format or content?

Format, almost always. A manuscript that fails the mechanical check is returned before anyone reads the findings, which is why the checklist above is worth running yourself the day before you submit.