  The dipole response of $^{76}_{34}$Se in the energy range 4 to 9 MeV has been
analyzed using a $(\vec\gamma,{\gamma}')$ polarized photon scattering
technique, performed at the High Intensity $\gamma$-Ray Source facility, to
complement previous work performed using unpolarized photons. The results of
this work offer both an enhanced sensitivity scan of the dipole response and an
unambiguous determination of the parities of the observed J=1 states. The
dipole response is found to be dominated by $E1$ excitations, and can
reasonably be attributed to a pygmy dipole resonance. Evidence is presented to
suggest that a significant amount of directly unobserved excitation strength is
present in the region, due to unobserved branching transitions in the decays of
resonantly excited states. The dipole response of the region is underestimated
when considering only ground state decay branches. We investigate the electric
dipole response theoretically, performing calculations in a 3D cartesian-basis
time-dependent Skyrme-Hartree-Fock framework.
