CultureStudio Research Ltd is a Market Research Agency working in accordance with the MRS (Market Research Society) guidelines. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information throughout the research project. This policy explains how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have over your personal information.

The personal information we collect

When you become a participant for a market research project, we will gather contact and basic information from you to ensure that you can proceed with the research. We will also ask you for payment details so we can pay you an incentive for taking part.

During the research project, it may be necessary to use your phone number, name and email to communicate with you so during the project CultureStudio researchers will have access to your name and email during the project.

The information we collect during the project will be your responses to our research which may include videos, photos, audio and text.

How we use your personal information

Your name and contact information will be used to facilitate setting you up on the research platform, contact you about the research and pay you an incentive for taking part.

Your video, photo, audio and text responses to the research will be collated with other responses and provided as part of the research response to the client. The client will only use this information for internal purposes to improve their marketing, products or services. This information will never be disclosed publicly.

If we need to contact you to get further information or seek clarification about the research, we will do so within 12 months of the project being completed and will use the contact information you provided on signup.

Consent

We appreciate you consenting to take part in the research and providing insights into the project. If you change your mind about taking part in the research at any time, you can withdraw your consent by contacting us.

Anonymisation

Wherever possible we anonymise your responses as part of the research. Where we need to use video recordings of your responses, although they will not have your name or other personal details credited to them, the video recording is considered personal information under data protection legislation as it has your image and voice on it.

Securing your information

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We ensure that only those employees and partners, who need access to your personal information as part of their business role, are given access. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and our contracts ensure that the information is kept confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we need to.

Retention

The personal information we collect during the screening process will be deleted after 12 months.

Your responses to the research questions will be deleted by us after 12 months.

Your name and contact details will be retained for accounting purposes for a period of 7 years as required by accounting legislation.

Data Sharing

To be able to complete the research project, we have a number of partners to ensure that it runs smoothly. For example, the online platform, cloud services such as Google Workspace, etc. We have agreements in place with these companies to ensure that your personal information is secure and accessed only by those who need to use it. We never share your personal information outside of the needs of the research.

Where is your information stored?

Wherever possible, all the personal information we collect is processed within the UK or European Economic Area (EEA).  Although this is not always possible when the research project is international.

Whenever we transfer your personal information outside of the UK or EEA, we do our best to make sure a similar degree of security for the personal information is in place. We may use specific contracts or codes of practice to ensure this.

What are your rights?

You have a number of rights about how the personal information you provide can be used. These are:

-        Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).

-        The ability to request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).

-        Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).

-        Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).

-        Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be 'forgotten').

-        Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).

-        Obtain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes (right to data portability).

-        Not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

If you would like to know more about your rights under data protection law, you can find out more at the Information Commissioners Office website.

How to contact us

If you wish to talk through anything in this privacy notice, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact us by email at hanna@theculturestudio.co.uk and we will be happy to help.

About Us

CultureStudio Research Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered company number: 12506694 whose registered office is 2 Church Street, Brighton, England, BN1 1UJ.

Last updated: September 2023