GDPR

Your privacy is important to us. We take great care in protecting your privacy and the information you provide whilst conducting research with us (whether through online, telephone/mobile or face to face research approaches).

We are committed to meeting the requirements of the following laws and codes:

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Data Protection Act 1998 and the new Data Protection Act which will enact GDPR requirements
Market Research Society’s (MRS) Code of Conduct

We do not sell or promote anything. We conduct market research and we commit, in obtaining your co-operation, not to mislead you about the nature of the research or how the findings will be used. Your responses will be treated as confidential unless you consent to being identified.

We operate in the UK under the name Researchers at Crown Ltd T/A Teamsearch (here after known as Teamsearch). Our registered office is Floor 2, 1850 Mill, Shaw Lodge Mills, Shaw Lan, Halifax HX3 9ET. We are registered with the ICO under registration z723150x. We are registered with Companies House under registration number 3921280

Why have we contacted you?

If you are invited to take part in research, it will be because:

You were selected due to being, a customer or recently left customer of one of the companies for whom we work
You have given permission for a company to supply your details to a third party for research purposes
You have taken part in previous research administered by Teamsearch and given us your permission to contact you in the future for research purposes.

If you have been contacted by Teamsearch and you do not believe you have given your permission or just wish your name to be removed from the database, let us know and we will remove you from the contact list for that specific research project and inform the relevant organisation who supplied your details. Your rights under GDPR are protected and we will reply to any ‘subject access requests’ within 48 hours. Please submit any requests or queries to gdpr@teamsearchmr.co.uk

We never knowingly invite children under the age of 16 to participate in research studies without taking measures to ensure appropriate consent from a responsible adult has been obtained. We actively check

What information do we hold?

We are typically provided with nothing more than a name and a phone number and/or email address in order to contact you. For other methods of research, such as F2F, we may have approached you in the street or in a shop for example.

Where we are provided with a database or where we have bought in a database we request only the minimum amount of details to allow us to conduct the research to the specification we have been commissioned to carry out. We never hold sensitive data such as account numbers or financial details.

When we contact you, we generally do so for one of the following purposes:

To invite you to participate in research
To confirm the details of research you have agreed to take part in
To conduct research with you
To validate answers/views you gave in a recent research we conducted (if you have consented to us doing so)
To update and to ensure that our records of your personal information are correct (applicable to those consenting to being part of an ongoing community or panel)
To notify you if you have won a prize draw that we administered or to provide you with an incentive for taking part.

What information do we collect?

The information we collect can contain your personal opinions to the questions we ask you as well as personal information such as name, address, postcode, gender, occupation, age etc. We may occasionally collect sensitive personal information such as political views. As with all research you have the option to refuse to take part or refuse to answer any individual question(s). Refusing to answer any one or more question(s) will not impact your ability to complete a research survey and if relevant, be entered into any prize draws. This is collected for quality control purposes and is not shared with anyone outside of our organisation unless you express permission has been obtained (see the section ‘who do we share data with?’

Where relevant to the research being undertaken, we may collect business contact information, such as, company name, job title, and department. This is collected for quality control purposes and is not shared with anyone outside of our organisation unless you express permission has been obtained (see the section ‘who do we share data with?’’

In addition, for online surveys we will record your IP address, which type of browser you are using, your screen size and other basic metrics. This is collected for quality control purposes and is not shared with anyone outside of our organisation unless you express permission has been obtained (see the section ‘who do we share data with?’’

We do not do any invisible processing of data from your computer. We will only collect and use personal information in accordance with this policy to the extent deemed reasonably necessary to serve our legitimate business purposes, and we will maintain appropriate safeguards to ensure the security, integrity, accuracy and privacy of the information you have provided.

Teamsearch makes reasonable efforts to keep personal information in its possession or control, which is used on an ongoing basis, accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information available to us. We rely on you to help us keep your personal information accurate, complete and current by answering our questions honestly.

Personally identifiable information collected will be kept for no longer than 12 months from project commencement unless stated specifically at the time of taking part. Non identifiable information you give will be kept for no longer than 5 years.

How is my consent gained and is it demonstrable?

At the start of every research project we will provide you the vital information that will allow you to provide informed consent as to whether you wish to take part or not. This will include who we are calling on behalf of, the length of time we need to complete a survey, the general topic and, if relevant, any incentive information

For certain research projects it is vital that we do not reveal the clients name upfront so as to avoid any bias in your answers. We will be able to reveal the clients name at the end of the survey if requested.

How do we use the data you give us?

The personal information we collect is:

Combined with the responses/views/opinions of others who participated in the same research and reported back anonymously to the client that commissioned the study
Used on an aggregated basis to analyse the data based on certain groups or demographic profiles
Used to administer and operate prize draws/incentives (further details on this use of personal information can be found in the applicable Prize Draw/Incentivisation terms and conditions available on request or at the point of undertaking the research)
Occasionally used to re-contact you to validate your responses (if you have consented to us doing so).
Occasionally usde to contact you if we feel you'd have a legitimate interest in a new research project, especially if that included a form of remuneration (such as a voucher).

All of your survey responses are treated as confidential. We will never intentionally disclose your personal information or individual survey responses to the client that commissioned the study or any third parties unless:

You request or consent to sharing your identifying information and individual responses
In the rare but possible circumstance that the information is subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, orders or for similar legal or regulatory requirements.

Who do we share information with?

We will never sell your personal information to third parties. From time to time we may employ other companies and individuals (defined as partners) to perform functions on our behalf. Such as conduct research in a language that we are unable to do so in-house. On such occasions they will have access to the personal information needed to perform their functions but will not use it for other purposes. Agreements are in place to ensure that any third parties must also process the personal information as set out in this Privacy Policy and as permitted by the UK’s Data Protection Act/laws/GDPR.

The data we or our partners collect during the research process is reported back to our client in anonymised format unless you have explicitly given permission to be identified. We do not share any research data we collect data with other parties. All data is stored in secure UK servers. A detailed data security risk assessment can be provided upon request to gdpr@teamsearchmr.co.uk

We shall endeavour to ensure that your personal information is kept confidential and secure.

Processing of prizes/incentives from the result may result in your contact details being passed onto a third party i.e. Amazon, M&S, John Lewis etc. This would purely be in order for the prize/incentive to be sent out to you electronically and would not result in any marketing or follow up.

Remuneration for taking part in surveys/Incentives

We may provide remuneration to people in return for completing our surveys. This could be in the form of a prize draw, a voucher or direct payment (such as BACS or PayPal transfer). Herein referred to as incentives. We never provide discounted offers, such as '50% off', and under Market Research Society guidelines we do not provide incentives directly for our client’s products or services.

To receive any incentive each respondent would need to pass all qualifying questions for the survey, which typically, but not guaranteed, are all completed within the first 10 questions, and go onto to complete all required questions in our survey. We often cannot reveal upfront the criteria that a person must pass in order to take part in a fully completed survey as it could result in inaccurate information being provided to us in order to receive the incentive. No part payment of incentives will be provided for part completion of a survey. This includes surveys terminated due to non-qualifying answers or if the respondent terminates the survey before it has completed. Whilst we aim to provide an estimated interview duration at the start of every survey this can be shorter or longer than advertised due to the responses being provided by the respondent or other factors such as the requirement to repeat questions at the respondent’s request. Our interview duration estimates are based on the average pre research timings and/or the average duration experienced by completed surveys achieved to date.

All incentives are sent to a respondent, typically within 5 working days after completing the survey however please note we reserve the right to allow up to 28 days.

We keep a full audit trail of all incentives provided, including but not exhaustive of, name, phone number, email address, incentive voucher provided including value, whether communications have been opened or claimed (digital incentive forms only). To minimise fraud, we re-claim all incentives if not claimed within 6 months. A respondent can contact us up to 7 years after completing a survey to have an incentive reissued. We make every attempt to ensure an incentive is received on the first attempt by sending a text message as well as an email (if a digital/electronic form of incentive is sent).

All queries regarding an incentive should be sent to accounts@teamsearchmr.co.uk and clearly state your name, phone number and also any information on the survey completed such as the topic discussed, dates/times completed in order to expedite any investigations.

A cookie is a small text file that may be placed on your device (computer, mobile phone, tablet) when you complete one of our online surveys. To complete a survey with us we will use a session cookie. This is a temporary cookie and is removed when you close the browser. This session cookie allows us to give your visit to our website (or one of our third party partners’ websites) a unique identifier so you can complete the survey. You can configure your browser to notify you when cookies are being placed on your computer. You can also turn cookies off and delete those you do not want. Please see your web browsers help section for information on how to do this.

Security

Teamsearch maintains appropriate technical, administrative and physical safeguards to protect information, including, without limitation, personally identifiable information, received or collected by us. We review, monitor and evaluate our privacy practices and protection systems on a regular basis. Only certain employees have access to the personal information you provide us and are only granted access for data analysis and quality control purposes. Teamsearch is not responsible for any errors by individuals or organisations in submitting personally identifiable information to us.

Access Rights

Your co-operation in any survey conducted by Teamsearch is voluntary at all times, and we are always grateful for your help.

Right of access and right of rectification - You are entitled to access the personal information we hold about you (which is known as a subject access request) and you have the right to update any incorrect information.
Right to withdraw consent - You also have the right to withdraw consent you gave for participation in one of our surveys at any time
Right to be forgotten – this request allows you the right to have your personal data held by us securely erased. In such requests we will delete them from the project we have contacted you on/for and will pass the request to the organisation that provided us with the details in the initial instance.

Wherever reasonable and practical we will carry out such requests and do so within 10 working days of you emailing gdpr@teamsearchmr.co.uk

Queries

If you have any queries concerning this policy, our website or our research, or would like to make a subject access request, please contact us on gdpr@teamsearchmr.co.uk

If you have concerns regarding how your personal information has been processed by Teamsearch you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) via the following options:

Website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns Telephone helpline: 0303 123 1113. We are registered with the ICO under registration z723150x.

Our policy may be updated periodically and the latest version will always be available here on the Teamsearch website or available at the point of taking part in research.

Teamsearch Privacy Policy last updated 20/06/2022