Editing Respondent

{{Short description|Reacting person in a lawsuit/court case or a research participant}}
{{more citations needed|date=March 2024}}
A '''respondent''' is a person who is called upon to issue a response to a communication made by another. The term is used in legal contexts, in [[survey methodology]], and in psychological conditioning.

== Legal usage ==
In [[law|legal usage]], this term specifically refers to the [[defendant]] in a [[Legal process|legal proceeding]] commenced by a petitioner, and also to an [[appellee]], or the opposing party, in an [[Appeal#Who can appeal|appeal]] from a decision by an initial fact-finder or tribunal. For example in a Court of Appeal case, the respondents are the party facing the appellant, who is challenging a lower court decision or some aspect of it. The respondent may have been the "claimant" or the "defendant" in the lower court.<ref>[[England and Wales Court of Appeal]] (Civil Division), [https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2024/1585.html Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs v LJ Fairburn & Son Ltd & ors, R (On the Application of) <nowiki>[</nowiki>2024<nowiki>]</nowiki>, EWCA Civ 1585], delivered on 20 December 2024, accessed on 9 January 2025</ref>

In the [[United States Senate]], the two sides in an [[impeachment trial]] are called the management and the respondent.

== Psychology usage ==
In [[psychology]], respondent conditioning is a synonym for [[classical conditioning]] or [[Pavlovian conditioning]]. Respondent behavior specifically refers to the behavior consistently elicited by a reflexive or classically conditioned stimulus.

== Survey usage ==
In [[Survey (human research)|population survey]] and [[Questionnaire construction#Pretesting|questionnaire pretesting]], a respondent is a [[research participant]] replying with answers or feedback to a survey.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lavrakas |first=Paul |title=Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods |publisher=[[Sage Publishing]] |year=2008 |isbn=9781412918084 |editor-last=Lavrakas |editor-first=Paul |pages= |chapter=Respondent |doi=10.4135/9781412963947}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last1=Sha |first1=Mandy |last2=Pan |first2=Yuling |date=2013-12-01 |title=Adapting and Improving Methods to Manage Cognitive Pretesting of Multilingual Survey Instruments |url=https://www.surveypractice.org/article/2888 |journal=Survey Practice |language=en |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=1–8 |doi=10.29115/SP-2013-0024 |doi-access=free|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Depending on the survey questions and context, respondent answers may represent themselves as individuals, a household or organization of which they are a part, or as a proxy to another individual.

==Other usages==
In non-legal or informal usage, the term refers to one who refutes or responds to a thesis or an argument. In [[cross-cultural communication]], the second person responding to the meaning or message from an original source which has been [[Contextualization (sociolinguistics)|contextualised]] or decoded for the understanding of respondents as ''recipients or hearers'' of the message occurring from a different cultural context.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Civil law legal terminology]]
[[Category:Survey methodology]]
[[Category:Psychology experiments]]
[[Category:American legal terminology]]