A preliminary study was conducted to investigate strategies that elementary teachers and students use in responding to requests and to determine whether strategy use varies with request imposition. Subjects were 26 fifth-grade students drawn from six classes in one school district and 17 fourth- or fifth-grade teachers from the same district. Individual teachers were presented with 20 student requests, one at a time, and were asked to respond to each request as they might in a classroom setting. They were also asked not to dwell on each item but to respond spontaneously. Following comparable procedures, investigators provided individual students with 20 teacher requests. Imposition ratings of requests were collected a month later to eliminate potential bias due to selective memory for items. Results indicated that both teachers and students perceived differences in impositions among a set of requests made of them. Since teachers judged requests to be more of an imposition than did students, they were less likely to respond with simple compliance and more apt to comply conditionally or not to comply at all. Students' response strategies did not vary as a function of request imposition; their predominant response was simple compliance. (MP)