What do you call a person who is not involved directly in a situation but they have some ideas and assumptions about it?

Question

linguists!
We are conducting research on a suicide, and we are asking people who have suicidal ideation/behavior about the possible causes, but we're also asking those who don't have about what they think that may lead people to commit suicide. We're trying to make a comparison between outsiders' assumptions and reality. What term would you use to describe those "public outsiders"?
Thanks!

hb20007 · Accepted Answer

You can label the groups more generically, for example,

The participants were divided into two groups: Group A, comprised of participants who scored above X on the suicide risk assessments, and Group B, who scored below X.

If you want less generic labels, you can refer to them as the high-risk and low-risk group, or high-risk patients and low-risk patients.
I prefer this approach over more specific labels like “outsiders” because we are talking about a scale and not a binary classification. Most of these “outsiders” will fall somewhere on the scale and not in the extreme of never having thought about suicide.

user57854437 · Answer

Pretty sure there must be a more precise word, but I offer laity

the mass of the people as distinguished from those of a particular profession or those specially skilled

writers who can interpret this wholeness both to their colleagues and the laity.
— P. B. Sears
[Merriam-Webster]

Greybeard · Answer

What term would you use to describe those "public outsiders"?

They can be known as "the control" or "the control group". These terms are more popular with experiments that use a drug on some and a placebo on others, but they also refer to a group who does not experience the experiment and is merely observed so as to discover natural behaviour/reaction.

What do you call a person who is not involved directly in a situation but they have some ideas and assumptions about it?

3 Answers

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question