How to Cite a Government Report in APA
Updated October 2026
Citing a government report in APA comes down to one template and a handful of rules. Below: the exact 7th edition format, a real example produced by our citation engine, and the in-text form — or paste your source into the generator on this page and copy the finished citation.
The APA format
Agency. (Year). Title of report in sentence case (Report No. X). Parent department. https://url
APA (7th edition) formats a government report reference as shown above. A real example, generated by our citation engine:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). CDC global: A year of action and impact: 2024 annual report. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/258498
In-text(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025)
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Citation style
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition (2020). The 7th dropped the publisher location and the "Retrieved from" prefix that the 6th required.
Finding the pieces
Or skip the hunt: Paste the report's landing-page URL into the generator, or use Manual Entry with the agency as author. It works out what the source is, fills every field from the source's own record, and is already set to APA.
- Author — the agency or department that issued it, written in full
- Report number — on the cover or title page; include it after the title when present
- Year — publication year from the cover or front matter
- The official URL — the agency's own page for the report, not a third-party mirror
APA's formatting rules at work
- Authors are inverted with initials: Alvarez, M.
- Titles use sentence case — only the first word, proper nouns, and the word after a colon are capitalized
- The date comes right after the author, in parentheses
- DOIs are formatted as full links: https://doi.org/10.xxxx
Government Report-specific pitfalls
- The agency is usually both author and publisher — most styles then drop the repeated name
- Larger hierarchy can be included: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health
- Congressional documents, statutes, and case law have specialized legal-citation formats beyond this pattern
In-text citations in APA
APA cites in the text with author and date: (Alvarez, 2024) for a paraphrase, with a page or paragraph locator for quotes — (Alvarez, 2024, p. 12) or (Alvarez, 2024, para. 3). Three or more authors shorten to et al. from the first citation: (Harris et al., 2020).
No author? A short version of the title stands in, in quotes: ("First Words of Title," 2024). No date? Use (Author, n.d.).
Building the References
Every in-text citation pairs with a full entry on the References page, alphabetized by author. Add each citation to your bibliography as you generate it, and the Bibliography Builder assembles and exports the finished page to Word with the title, ordering, and indentation APA requires.
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Go Premium — $5/monthFrequently asked questions
- What's the basic APA format for a government report?
- Agency. (Year). Title of report in sentence case (Report No. X). Parent department. https://url — see the worked example above, generated by the same engine that powers the free citation tool.
- Who is the author when no person is named?
- The issuing agency, written out in full. In-text, long agency names can be abbreviated after a first full mention: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2024), then (WHO, 2024).
- How do I cite a government report in APA in-text?
- Author and year: (Alvarez, 2024), adding a page or paragraph locator for direct quotes.
- Can I get this citation in other styles too?
- Yes — every result in the generator renders APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and IEEE simultaneously. Generate once, switch styles with one click.