As a longstanding independent market and social research company, the protection of personal data has always been a top priority for Alpha Research Ltd (Alpha Research). We are fully committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and complying with the requirements of the Genearal Data Protection Legislation (GDPR) and the research industry professional standards.
Alpha Research is a Company Partner of the Market Research Society (MRS) and abides by the MRS Code of Conduct. We are also registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for the processing of personal data (registration Z9813573).
If you have any question about how we look after your data please contact us:
Personal data is defined as anything that may identify an individual e.g. full name (if in addition to any of the following…), address, telephone number email, national insurance number, ID/membership number of any kind, ISP address etc. Alpha Research also includes photos/recordings in their definition of personal data (but only when combined with identifiable information).
Alpha Research is a market and social research agency. We conduct research on behalf of a wide range of public, semi-public, not-for-profit and private sector organisations (our clients). We may collect and process personal data about you in the following ways:
The legal basis on which we collect and/or process your data will be either:
When we ask your consent to collect and process personal data about you we will provide you with the name of the company collecting the data, the subject and purpose of the research, the type of organisation on whose behalf we are working, how we will use the data, the time commitment involved, any tasks required/costs you may incur, any recordings being made, and how long we will retain your personal data. We will also make reference to the MRS Code of Conduct and to your right to withdraw at any time.
We will only use any personal data we collect from your for the purpose for which consent has been obtained.
Anyone collecting personal data on our behalf will have signed contracts with us, agreeing that they (their employees and any individuals acting on their behalf) will strictly adhere to the requirements of this policy and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
It is the responsibility of our clients/suppliers to ensure that when they provide us with personal data about you, they have complied with the requirements of GDPR .
If you participate in a research project for us, we will retain your personal data until the related project invoice has been paid by our client (completion) plus six months. After this time, we will use a physical or digital file shredder service to destroy the personal data we hold about you. The six-month period enables quality control to be completed and any project queries to be answered.
Anyone collecting personal data on our behalf will have signed contracts with us, agreeing that they will also securely destroy any personal data after this same six-month period.
Should we ask your permission to recontact you to follow up on a piece of research you have taken part in, any follow-up will only relate to the project/client concerned, and we will specify the time-period concerned when you give your consent.
For qualitative methodologies e.g. focus groups, depth interviews, bulletin boards etc., we may ask your consent to extend Alpha Research’s retention of personal data for up to 12 months. This allows us to monitor repeat participation/maintain quality research recruitment. Photos/recordings – only when containing no identifying information – may be kept indefinitely, as they could for example be included in research reports used/retained by our clients for internal use.
Any exception to the above retention procedures will have been agreed at the consent stage.
If at any point you wish to withdraw from research you have agreed to participate in, you should contact your recruiter or Alpha Research. You will have been provided with details of how to do this when you gave your consent.
If you would like to revoke your consent and do not want us to hold on to your personal data, you can simply reply to any received communication (or email info@alpharesearch.co.uk) with the title ‘DELETE ME’, or write to Alpha Research Ltd, Robert House, 19 Station Road, Chinnor, Oxfordshire OX39 4PU.
In most cases personal data is not shared outside of Alpha Research / Alpha Research employees.
We will never sell or lease your data to any third parties. From time to time we may transfer your data to another company that performs functions on our behalf. Where personal data is not needed to complete the task required then it will be removed prior to sharing the data. We will only share your personal data with third parties who are directly involved in the research process and only for the purposes of our research. Third parties processing data on our behalf are obliged to hold your data securely and to delete it on completion of the project. They must also follow the requirements of this policy and the General Data Protection Regulation.
We invest appropriate resources to protect your personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure and use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.
Any physical records – photos/recordings/files – that contain personal data will be stored in a secure/locked location. We operate a clear-desk policy for personal data.
Any digital records – photos/recordings/files – that contain personal data will be stored password protected on a secure server and never on personal hard drives (unless the device is kept in locked storage when not in use). All devices that can be used to access personal data are password protected with a screen-out of a maximum of 5 minutes.
Our own servers run up-to-date IT security software and continual virus/malicious scanning software.
If we collect or process your personal data, you have the following legal rights which allow you to see, change or delete, or question how we use your personal data. Further information can be obtained from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
We may update this policy. The associated procedures are monitored and reviewed on a regular basis and altered in line with technological advances and updated guidelines.