Privacy Notice for Research Participants

1. What we do

Quadrangle is a Customer Consultancy; we help our clients to understand what matters to their customers. This often involves us conducting studies on our clients’ behalf with their customers, prospective customers and the wider general public to improve their understanding of what people like, dislike, are satisfied with or want in the future.

We also undertake research to help our clients communicate better and more effectively with their customers.

We conduct surveys and qualitative research using a variety of methodologies including by telephone, face to face, online, by email and by SMS.

Quadrangle is a trading name of Quadrangle Research Group Limited, a company incorporated in England with Company Number 8064640 and whose registered office is at The Butlers Wharf Building, 36 Shad Thames, London, SE1 2YE.

2. About this Privacy Notice

Your privacy is important to us, and we ask that you read this Privacy Notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal data, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

This privacy notice relates to personal data of:

  • Visitors to Quadrangle controlled websites including, by way of example, test.quadrangle.com, and if you are visiting one of our websites, please also refer to our Cookie Notice.
  • Respondents, who participate in surveys or qualitative research on behalf of our clients.

The practices covered include what information is gathered, with whom the information is shared, how long it is retained and where it is stored.

3 . What is personal data?

Under Data Protection laws of the United Kingdom, the term “personal data” means any information relating to a person who can be directly or indirectly identified, in particular, by reference to an identifier. This definition provides for a wide range of personal identifiers including name, address, email address, identification number, location data or online identifier. Personal data applies to both automated personal data and to manual filing systems where personal data are accessible according to specific criteria. If an individual cannot be identified from the data held then that data is not classified as personal data.

4. Why did you contact me in the first place?

As a customer consultancy Quadrangle is commissioned to conduct research by a very wide range of organisations, including amongst others: charities, education institutions, trade associations, local authorities, government departments and a wide range of commercial businesses. All these organisations share the same need of ascertaining what their customers, potential customers or the general public think so that they can move their organisations forward better and ensure that they are able to provide you with an improved service. If you have been contacted to take part in research by Quadrangle, it is because they would like your views and opinions.

5. If you do not want to take part in research studies

We do not want to disturb you or ask you to take part in studies if you do not wish to so. If you would no longer like to be contacted to take part in research studies undertaken by Quadrangle, please contact us either by phone or by emailing dontcontactme@quadrangle.com and we will add you to our non-contact list (and if we received your details from our client, we will inform our client that you do not want to participate in research for them in the future). We will require your name, phone number, address, email address (and if possible the name of the client or study) in order to carry out your request. It would help us if you have these details to hand when you contact us.

Quadrangle does not sell or market any products on our clients’ behalf. The reason why we get in touch with you as a respondent is always for research. The answers respondents provide are completely confidential and only ever passed on to our clients in an aggregate or anonymised form unless explicit consent has been obtained from you in the survey to share personal data with a client.

As a market research company conducting surveys, Quadrangle is exempt from the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) guidelines as the TPS was set up to allow registration by those who do not wish to receive sales and marketing calls. This is stated in the letter TPS send out to all those who register with them: “Your TPS registration will not stop calls from companies involved in market research…”

The TPS website also states the following in its FAQ section:

“Telephone Preference Service (TPS) aims to reduce live direct marketing calls and is unable to stop calls from organisations who are conducting research. Genuine research calls are not deemed as direct marketing as they generally relate to information gathering or seeking of opinions whereas the purpose of a direct marketing call would be to sell or market a product or service.

If you want to stop these calls you will need to contact the companies that make them directly or inform the caller that the call and any future calls from them is not welcomed.”

If you wish to register with TPS to prevent sales or marketing calls please follow this link: http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/. TPS is a free service.

6. Information we collect

We collect personal information when you take part in research we conduct on behalf of our clients. In these situations, we may collect information that can identify you such as your name, job title, company name, your address, your email address and your telephone number, your voice or video footage of you, as well as your responses to the research which may include your views on our client’s products and services and their competitors, demographic, financial and behavioural data.

We will also collect personal information if you fill in forms on the website or email us, for example if you download a report, sign up to receive our newsletter or take part in surveys about our website/services. The information we collect includes information which could identify you, such as your name, job title, company name, email address and telephone number.

This website is not directed at children and we have no intention of collecting personal data from young people. If we become aware that personal data from a child under 16 has been collected without the consent of such child’s parent or guardian, we will use all reasonable efforts to delete such information.

7. How we use your information

We will only use your personal data for the reasons specified in this Privacy Notice, unless you have specifically consented to, or opted in to, any other use of your personal data.

The personal data we collect may be used for the following purposes:

  • to send you future reports and newsletters written by Quadrangle;
  • to manage and improve our website and services;
  • to invite you to take part in and manage research surveys and other market research activities;
  • to share with agents, contractors or partners of Quadrangle in connection with services that these individuals or entities perform for, or with, our company. These agents, contractors or partners are restricted from using personal data in any way other than to provide services for Quadrangle. We may, for example, provide personal data to agents, contractors or partners for hosting our databases, for data processing services, for hosting or paying participants to take part in research studies or for organising research events at venues, or to send you information that you requested; however, these parties cannot use your personal data for their own purposes unrelated to the work they are carrying out for us;
  • to respond to duly authorised information requests of governmental authorities or where required by law;
  • to investigate suspected fraudulent activity in connection with the website or violation of another party’s rights;
  • in connection with the sale, assignment, or other transfer of our business to which the information relates, in which case we will require any such buyer to agree to treat personal data in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

8. Who we share the information with

From time to time we may employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. These functions may include hosting our databases, surveys or other research projects; for data processing services; analysing data; recruiting or paying participants to take part in studies or for organising research events at venues; or to send you information that you requested. The third parties will have access to the personal data needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes. They will never use your information to market to you. They must also process the personal data as set out in this Privacy Notice and as permitted by the UK’s data protection laws. Furthermore, we have put in place the appropriate contractual provisions as required under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We will not sell your personal data to third parties.

9. What is a Data Controller?

A Data Controller is a party that determines the purpose or means of the processing of personal data.

10. What is a Data Processor?

A Data Processor is a party that processes the personal data on behalf of the Data Controller.

11. Quadrangle’s two roles as Data Controller and Data Processor

When we collect your personal data and we are the Data Controller of that personal data, we will always disclose this fact at the beginning of a study, together with the client’s name, the purpose of the study, the types of data being collected and the types of processing that will be performed with that data including what data will be shared with our client. We will also ask you if you consent to take part in the study and for your permission to process the data as described. We will always give you the right to object to participating in the research or to withdraw from it.

We act as a Data Processor when we process data on behalf of a client. The client alone determines the purpose of and manner in which the data is collected and used, such as when we collect, analyse or process data in accordance with the instructions of a client or where our clients pass on the data of their customers to enable us to conduct research on their behalf. When we are acting as a Data Processor on behalf of a client we will disclose this fact at the start of a study, together with the name of the client or clients we are processing this data for, and inform you of the purpose of the study, the types of data being collected and the types of processing that will be done with that data – including what data will be shared with our client and how long this data will be stored.

12. Quadrangle as a Data Processor

12.1 Our role as a Data Processor

In relation to our role as a customer consultancy and Data Processor we process information under the instructions of our clients and have no direct relationship with the individuals whose personal data we collect or process.

If you seek access to correct, amend, or delete inaccurate personal data, or if you seek to invoke any other rights in respect to your personal data under applicable laws, you should direct your query to Quadrangle’s client as it is the Data Controller. If Quadrangle is requested by our client to remove personal data, we will respond within a reasonable timeframe in accordance with applicable laws.

If you struggle to contact our client you can request us to contact them on your behalf by emailing us at subjectaccessrequest@quadrangle.com or by calling us.

12.2 Data storage, data access and data retention

Personal data that is collected from you may, subject to adequate confidentiality undertakings, and for the sole purpose of providing our clients with the services they have contracted from us, be accessed by our personnel and to or by third party companies and subcontractors that help us provide our services. In any such case, the personnel granted access to your personal data will have been deemed by their managers to have a reasonable business need to do so.

We will retain the personal data which our clients have instructed us to process for them for as long as needed to provide the services to our clients in accordance with the contractual terms in our agreements with them. Our clients can at any time instruct for such personal data to be deleted. Quadrangle will retain any personal data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and in accordance with our client agreements until our work is complete and the data is no longer required.

12.3 Sharing of research responses with our clients

In most cases we will only share anonymised data or aggregated data with our clients and they will not be able to attribute any of the responses that you have provided to you, as an individual. In these cases, we will not be passing your personal data to our clients.

Where projects require us to share any personally identifiable responses with our clients, we will make it explicitly clear at the relevant part of a study and obtain informed consent from you as a respondent to share that information with a named client. You will be able to withdraw from the study at any point if you do not want your data to be shared with our client or for any other reason.

Occasionally we or our clients will extrapolate/model out traits, using the data that we have collected, that can be applied across their wider customer base to improve their understanding of and ability to classify and communicate with their customers. In these situations, your personal data will not be shared with the client unless we obtain your prior consent to do so.

12.4 Recording or re-contacting you

As part of our quality control procedures, and in accordance with the IQCS (Interviewer Quality Control Scheme), we may record telephone interviews so that our interviewers can be monitored to ensure data is not falsified or inaccurate. We may also audio and/ or video record any long in-depth interviews or group discussions and have them transcribed to ensure that we record the contents of your responses accurately. Similarly, we may ask for your phone number and permission to re-contact you if we conduct an interview or if you attend a group discussion to ensure that you took part in the research. We may also re-contact you if we have given you a cash incentive to ensure that you received it. In all these cases we will ask your permission to re-contact you or to record your interview. If you want to find out more about the IQCS, please visit their website at http://iqcs.org.

13. Quadrangle as a Data Controller

13.1 Our role as a Data Controller

When Quadrangle acts as the Data Controller we will make our role clear to you. You may choose to provide us with your personal data in a variety of situations. For example, you may want to take part in a study or to give us information such as your name, residential address, email address, post code, resume, phone number, and additional contact information. We will let you know how we will use such information and seek your consent in accordance with applicable laws before we collect it from you. You may at any time revoke your consent or invoke rights in relation to the personal data provided to us in accordance with any applicable laws. If you inform us that you do not want us to use this information to make further contact with you beyond fulfilling your requests, we will respect your wishes. If you give us personal data about somebody else such as a spouse or work colleague, we will assume that you have his or her permission to do so.

You may contact Quadrangle in order to invoke your rights as a data subject under applicable laws in accordance with section 15 below.

13.2 Information we must provide you

  1. Quadrangle is an entity acting as the Data Controller.
  2. Contact details of the data protection officer are available in section 15 below.
  3. The purposes of the processing are either stated in the consent note we obtain from you prior to processing your personal data, or alternatively:
      1. To invite you to complete surveys or other research projects;
      2. To gather information as part of a study;
      3. To anonymise your responses to a survey;
      4. To process your replies to a survey to enable us to provide aggregate level data or insight to our clients in a non-identifiable manner;
      5. To verify your identity;
      6. To provide information on products, services, or call-back requests.

    If you no longer wish to receive communications from us, you may opt-out by following the unsubscribe instructions located at the bottom of any email communication, or by emailing us at dontcontactme@quadrangle.com, or by contacting us by phone and telling us you do not want to be contacted in future. We will require your name, phone number, address, email address and the reason why we contacted you, including the relevant details of the study, where possible.

    If you wish to opt-out from marketing emails provided by third parties, you must contact that third party directly.

  • The recipients of your personal data will be selected Quadrangle employees and third-party providers under contract with Quadrangle ensuring data protection levels equivalent to those set forth in this Privacy Notice. Where personal data collected in the EEA is transferred to a subcontractor in a third country outside of the EEA and which country is not deemed to meet the adequacy standards of the EU Commission, Quadrangle shall ensure that it only transfers your personal data with appropriate safeguards and in accordance with GDPR.
  • We will retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary in accordance with the purpose of the processing as communicated to you as part of the consent notice.
  • We delete personal data relating to surveys where the data subject has a) withdrawn their consent or b) as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and in accordance with our client agreements when our work is complete and the data is no longer required.
  • You have the right to seek access to, a copy of, and rectification or erasure of your personal data in accordance with applicable laws as set forth in section 15 below.
  • Where the processing of your personal data is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw such consent at any time as set forth in section 15 below.
  • Where applicable laws so prescribe, you have the right to lodge a complaint to a supervisory authority as set forth in section 15 below.

13.3 Other Quadrangle notices

In some cases, specific Quadrangle studies may contain other notices about the use of data and the information practices applicable to those studies.

13.4 Cross-border flows of personal data

Quadrangle conducts research and has partners globally. Our privacy practices are designed to provide protection for your personal data in accordance with the laws applicable to each respective location.

We will not transfer personal data of citizens of the UK and EU outside of the UK and EU unless this has been notified to you and any transfer is under a contract which includes the use of UK and EU approved standard contractual clauses (Model Clauses) or otherwise in accordance with GDPR.

13.5 Data storage, data access and data retention

Personal data that is collected from you may, subject to adequate confidentiality undertakings, and for the sole purpose of providing our clients with the services they have contracted from us, be accessed by our personnel and to or by third party companies and subcontractors that help us provide our services. In any such case, the personnel granted access to your personal data will have been deemed by their managers to have a reasonable business need to do so.

We will retain personal data for as long as needed to provide the services to our clients in accordance with the contractual terms in our agreements with them. Quadrangle will retain any personal data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and in accordance with our client agreements until our work is complete and the data is no longer required.

13.6 Sharing of research responses with our clients

In most cases we will only share anonymised data or aggregated data with our clients and they will not be able to attribute any of the responses that you have provided as an individual. In these cases, we will not be passing your personal data to our clients.

Where projects require us to share any personally identifiable responses with our clients, we will make it explicitly clear at the relevant part of a study and we will obtain informed consent from you to share that information with a named client.

Occasionally we or our clients will extrapolate/model out traits, using the data that we have collected, that can be applied across their wider customer base to improve their understanding of and ability to classify and communicate with their customers. In these situations, your personal data will not be shared with the client unless we obtain your prior informed consent to do so.

13.7 Sharing with Service Providers

We may share your information with third parties who provide services on our behalf to help with our business activities under contractual terms providing adequate protection to your information. These companies are authorised to use your personal data only under our instructions and only as necessary to provide the contracted services to us. These services may include:

  • Conducting or hosting research, coding, translation and data analysis;
  • Recruiting or paying participants to take part in studies or for organising research events at venues;
  • Creating films, images and audio media;
  • In conduct of audits on our business to ensure that we are complying with our responsibilities.

13.8 Passive collection

Some of our surveys may be hosted on sites that gather certain information automatically. This information may include Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring and exit pages, the files viewed on the site (for example, HTML pages, graphics, or other), operating system, date and time stamp, and clickstream data to analyse trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

13.9 Tracking technologies

Quadrangle and its partners may use cookies or similar technologies to analyse trends, administer their websites, track users’ movements around the website, and to keep track of the domains from which people visit. We may extract some information about your interactions in a non-identifiable format and combine it with other non-identifiable information such as clickstream data and gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on websites or services. To manage Flash cookies, please click here.

We partner with third parties who may display advertising on their websites or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third-party partners may use cookies or similar technologies in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to opt out of interest-based advertising click here, or if located in the European Union click here. Please note that Quadrangle has no relationship with the foregoing entities and we are therefore unable to confirm the effectiveness of their services. You will in any event continue to receive generic advertisements.

13.10 Mobile analytics

On some mobile surveys we may use mobile analytics software to allow us to better understand the functionality of mobile software on your phone. This software may record information such as how often you use any applications that form part of the study, the events that occur within the application, aggregated usage, performance data, and from where the application was downloaded. We do not link the information we store within the analytics software to any personally identifiable information you submit within the mobile application.

13.11 Recording or Re-contacting you

As part of our quality control procedures, and in accordance with the IQCS (Interviewer Quality Control Scheme), we may record telephone interviews so that our interviewers can be monitored to ensure data is not falsified or inaccurate. We may also audio and/ or video record any long in-depth interviews or group discussions and have them transcribed to ensure that we record the contents of your responses accurately. Similarly, we may ask for your phone number and permission to re-contact you if we conduct an interview or if you attend a group discussion to ensure that you took part in the research. We may also re-contact you if we have given you a cash incentive to ensure that you received it. In all these cases we will ask your permission to re-contact you or to record your interview. If you want to find out more about the IQCS, please visit their website at http://iqcs.org.

13.12 Disclosures required by law or to fulfil a business transition

We may also disclose your personal data as required by law such as to comply with a court order or other legal process when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request.

If Quadrangle is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email or a prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership, uses of your personal data, and choices you may have regarding your personal data.

We may also disclose your personal data to any other third party with your prior consent.

13.13 Notification of changes

We may update this Privacy Notice to reflect changes to our information practices. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

13.14 User data supplementation

We may receive information about you from other sources including from our clients, publicly available databases or third parties from whom we have purchased data and combine this data with information we already have about you. This helps us to update, expand, and analyse our records, improve the insights obtained from our research, identify potential research participants, and provide products and services that may be of interest to you. If you provide us personal data about others or if others give us your information, we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us.

Examples of the types of personal data that may be obtained from public sources, clients or purchased from third parties and combined with information we already have about you may include purchased lists of profiled contact details.

14. Security measures

The security of your personal data is important to us.

Quadrangle operates under a strong security and privacy regime. We have successfully undergone third party auditing in relation to our Information Security Management System, and we are accredited by the British Assessment Bureau that we have met the requirements of ISO27001 in relation to information security.

The ISO27001 audit report provides assurance that we have designed and implemented effective security controls as defined in the ISO standards. During the examination, the independent auditors evaluated and tested controls over the following domains:

  • Organization and management;
  • Communications and training;
  • Risk management, design, and implementation of controls;
  • Monitoring of controls;
  • Logical and physical access controls;
  • Systems operation and backups;
  • Personnel and third-party screening and controls;
  • Change Management.

Quadrangle is also accredited by IQCS (Interviewer Quality Control Scheme) and conducts all research in accordance with the Market Research Society (MRS) code of conduct. Further information about the MRS code of conduct can be found at https://www.mrs.org.uk/standards/code_of_conduct .

If your personal data is stored by Quadrangle, you are welcome to read more about how we protect your personal data by applying industry-leading security measures and performing ongoing security tests and controls. Please refer to our Security Measures, which are available for download here.

As part of its accreditation process, IQCS audits our interviewers’ policies and procedures to ensure that they have been adequately trained and that sufficient quality control checks have been made that the data they collect is accurate and complete.

15. Your rights, privacy questions, incident reporting and consent

The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act 2018 provide individuals with the following rights:

The right to be informed: We will ensure that your data will be subject to fair and lawful processing. The company will also ensure transparency at all times over how we use your use personal information.

The right of access: As an Individual you have the right to access your personal data by submitting a request to the company’s Data Protection Office.

The right to rectification: You have a right to have any inaccurate personal data rectified, or completed if it is incomplete.

The right to erasure: The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act 2018 introduces the right to have your personal data erased. In some circumstances, such a request will be subject to review by the company’s Data Protection Officer and your request might be refused based upon existing legal obligations.

The right to restrict processing: You have the right to request the restriction or suppression of your personal data. However, this is not an absolute right and only applies in certain circumstances.

The right to data portability: The right to data portability allows you to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes. However, such portability will be reviewed and in some circumstances, a request to exercise your right to portability might be refused. The company’s Data Protection Officer will always provide transparency in relation to any decision made.

The right to object: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling: The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act 2018 have provisions on:

  • automated individual decision-making (making a decision solely by automated means without any human involvement); and
  • profiling (automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain things about an individual). Profiling can be part of an automated decision-making process.

You have the right to object to any automated decision making and to request that your personal information used during the automated decision making to which you object is reassessed by manual means.

If you would like to exercise any of your rights, please contact the company’s Data Protection Officer by emailing DataProtectionOfficer@quadrangle.com or by writing to them at:

The Data Protection Officer,
Quadrangle Research Group Limited,
The Butlers Wharf Building,
36 Shad Thames,
London,
SE1 2YE.

Consent: In most circumstances during your relationship with us as a research participant, your consent will be required in order to process your personal data.

The law states that consent of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.

If you are enquiring about or exercising any of your legal rights or want to withdraw your consent on behalf of personal data we collect and process, please direct your query in the first instance to Quadrangle’s Data Protection Officer. In some circumstances, we will forward your enquiry to our client, in instances where they are the Data Controller (see sections 11 and 12.1 above).

If you have an unresolved privacy or personal data use concern or wish to make a complaint about how we are processing your personal data, we ask that you contact Quadrangle’s Data Protection Officer who will assist in addressing your concerns.

Should your concerns or complaint fail to be addressed satisfactorily, you can complain to the supervisory authority in the jurisdiction in which you reside. In the United Kingdom this is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

You can contact the ICO as follows:
Phone: 030 3123 1113

Post:

Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF.

Online: https://ico.org.uk/concerns

Should you wish to report an incident relating to Quadrangle’s security, confidentiality, or privacy, you are welcome to file a report by emailing subjectaccessrequest@quadrangle.com or by writing to us at Quadrangle, The Butlers Wharf Building, 36 Shad Thames, London, SE1 2YE marking your correspondence for the attention of the Data Protection Officer

16 . Do you need extra help?

If you would like this notice in another format (for example: audio, large print, braille) please contact us by emailing subjectaccessrequest@quadrangle.com or by writing to us at Quadrangle, The Butlers Wharf Building, 36 Shad Thames, London, SE1 2YE.

Quadrangle Research Group Limited