There are many different kinds of government documents: Senate and House hearings, reports, laws, court decisions etc. Each type is cited a bit differently. Here are examples of two of the most common kinds of documents in our catalog.
A report or informative document is cited much like a book. This example has an agency as the author. Agencies can be both author and publisher:
United Nations. (1991). Consequences of rapid population growth in developing countries. New York, NY: Taylor.
Government hearings are cited like this:
Hearings on the "Equal Rights" Amendment: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary, 91st Cong. 1 (1970).
The rules for citing government documents are on pages 216-224 of the 6th edition of the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association.
NOTE: in a document, references are double-spaced, with a hanging indent.
Many documents are now available only online. Here are some websites that can be searched for reports related to the class assignment.