Government documents as bibliographic references and sources in dissertations

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to compare the use of government documents as bibliographic references and source citations in dissertations written by doctoral candidates of The University of Oklahoma, College of Arts and Sciences, and College of Education during the years 1977–1979. General findings are: (1) there is no significant difference in the percentage of government documents cited as bibliographic references by candidates between the respective colleges, (2) there is no significant difference between the percentage of government documents used as source citations in dissertations written by candidates of the respective colleges, (3) limited inclusion of government documents as references and source citations was identified among all the various departments studied. The implications of limited use of government documents in doctoral dissertations are discussed and recommendations offered by the authors to better integrate government documents into the doctoral dissertation research process.