Research Privacy Policy
Introduction
This Privacy Policy for SEC Newgate Research lets you know what personal information of yours we hold, what we do with it, who we will disclose it to and how you can access the personal information we hold about you. You can also find out here how to change inaccurate personal information and how to opt out of receiving communications from us.
SEC Newgate Research, a division of SEC Newgate Pty Ltd (ABN #38 162 366 056) (“SEC Newgate Research”) respects and upholds your rights in adherence to the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”). SEC Newgate Research also adheres to the Privacy (Market and Social Research) Code 2014 (“Code”).
For more information about the Privacy Act, the Australian Privacy Principles and the Code click here.
What personal information about you does SEC Newgate Research collect and hold?
The information SEC Newgate Research collects and holds for the purposes of undertaking market and social research include your answers to our research questions and discussions.
This may include your name, date of birth, occupation, life stage, makeup of your household, whether you own or rent your home, and opinion and feedback in relation to a number of ideas, products, proposals or issues. When providing personal information you have the option of remaining anonymous or use a pseudonym to be identified by. However, in certain circumstances, such as where we receive your contact details from a third party or where the research data itself may potentially allow for identification, this may not be practicable.
Depending on the nature of the research we conduct, we may also collect sensitive information from you, including your political opinion, income level and cultural background. Sensitive information will only be collected with your prior consent and only if it is directly related to, or reasonably necessary for, the research we conduct.
At any point in undertaking research with us, you can choose not to answer any of our questions or to give us any details related to your personal and/or sensitive information.
How does SEC Newgate Research collect and hold your personal information?
SEC Newgate Research will generally collect your personal information directly from you, or from one of our accredited fieldwork companies, in the course of you participating in our qualitative and/or quantitative research. However, we may also from time to time collect personal information about you from third parties, such as an organisation or company of which you’re a customer, member or employee. We may also collect personal information from other organisations or companies who may be working with or related to the organisation or company of which you’re a customer, member or employee. If so, we will inform you as soon as practicable of this collection and the circumstances of this collection. This will often be at the invitation to participate in the research.
What are the purposes for which SEC Newgate Research uses, handles and discloses your personal information?
We will only use your personal information for the purpose of conducting our research and in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We do not disclose your personal information to anyone except our accredited fieldwork companies and only for the purposes of confirming your participation in our research. We will not use or disclose your personally identifiable information for the purpose of advertising, promotions or direct marketing activities.
If you declined to participate in our research, we may use your personal information to re-contact you for a research purpose if we have valid reasons to believe a genuine research concern warrants such re-contact. If you have participated in our research, we will only re-contact you if you were informed of this or we have valid reasons to believe a genuine research concern warrants such re-contact.
Results and findings from our research are only reported at an anonymous, non-identifiable level, unless the participating individual has provided express, written consent to be identified within the research findings and reports.
Outside of participation within our research, we may also collect, hold and use your personal information in order to respond to your enquiries.
We do not disclose your personal information, except to our own contractors for internal purposes and subject to this privacy policy, or if you consent, or if required by law.
Who will SEC Newgate Research disclose your personal information to?
SEC Newgate Research will not disclose any personally identifiable research information we collect from you unless we have your express prior consent and will only report the information you provide in an aggregate form that will not personally identify you. We will not disclose any personal information or personally identifiable research information to a third party for a purpose other than conducting our research unless we have your express prior consent or are required to do so by an Australian law or court/tribunal order. In most cases this will be to one of our accredited fieldwork companies.
In the course of conducting our research we may rely on third party service providers to host or store the data we collect who are located in New Zealand, or in rare cases, elsewhere overseas. In most cases, this survey data and research information will not be personally identifiable. We will also take reasonable steps to ensure any service providers (and their employees and contractors) comply with the Privacy Act and this Privacy Policy and/or are subject to similar privacy laws and you have the ability to enforce those rights.
Where research discussions are observed by clients, personal information in the form of audio-visual recordings may be disclosed via a secure, encrypted link for the exclusive purpose of observation by nominated members of the client team who have signed an attestation that they will only view the recording for observational purposes pertaining to the project at hand. This data is deleted six months after the end of the research project, as per our Retention and Destruction of Personal Information requirements under this policy.
Open access to and correction of your personal information
You have the right to request access to any personal information we hold about you. You can request this information by contacting the Privacy Officer at the details listed below. Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will respond to your request in a reasonable time (within two business days) and endeavour to provide you with a suitable range of choices as to how access is provided (e.g., emailing or mailing it to you), except in the limited circumstances specified in the Australian Privacy Principles.
If at any time you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request amendment of it and we will either amend the information or make a record of your comment, as we think appropriate.
Questions and Complaints
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or believe that we have at any time failed to keep one of our commitments to you to handle your personal information in the manner required by the Privacy Act, the APPs or the Code, then we ask that you contact us immediately using the following contact details:
Benjamin Wegener
Chief Data Scientist
We will respond and advise whether we agree with your complaint or not. If we do not agree, we will provide reasons. If we do agree, we will advise what (if any) action we consider it appropriate to take in response. If you are still not satisfied after having contacted us and given us a reasonable time to respond, then we suggest that you contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by:
- Phone: 1300 363 992 (local call cost, but calls from mobile and pay phones may incur higher charges). If calling from overseas (including Norfolk Island): +61 2 9284 9749
- TTY: 1800 620 241 (this number is dedicated to the hearing impaired only, no voice calls)
- TIS: Translating and Interpreting Service: 131 450 (If you don’t speak English or English is your second language and you need assistance and ask for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner)
- Post: GPO Box 2999 Canberra ACT 2601
- Fax: +61 2 9284 9666
- Email: [email protected]
SEC Newgate Research Website
When visiting SEC Newgate Research’s web site, the site server makes a record of the visit and logs the following information for statistical and administrative purposes:
- The user’s server address – to consider the users who use the site regularly and tailor the site to their interests and requirements;
- The date and time of the visit to the site – this is important for identifying the website’s busy times and ensuring maintenance on the site is conducted outside these periods;
- Pages accessed and documents downloaded – this indicates to SEC Newgate Research which pages or documents are most important to users and also helps identify important information that may be difficult to find;
- Duration of the visit – this indicates to us how interesting and informative the SEC Newgate Research site is to candidates; the type of browser used – this is important for browser specific coding; and
- In order to optimise the SEC Newgate Research web site and better understand its usage, we collect the visiting domain name or IP address, Computer Operating System, Browser Type and Screen Resolution.
A cookie is a piece of information that an Internet website sends to your browser when you access information at that site. Cookies are either stored in memory (session cookies) or placed on your hard disk (persistent cookies). The SEC Newgate Research web site does not use persistent cookies. Upon closing your browser the session cookie set by this website is destroyed and no Personal Information is maintained which might identify you should you visit our website at a later date.
Retention and Destruction of Personal Information
All research data, including any personal information provided as part of the research activities, is held in encrypted form on SEC Newgate’s secure servers located in Australia for the duration of the research project.
SEC Newgate Research will destroy or de-identify your personal information as soon as practicable once it is no longer needed for the purpose for our research purposes. However, we may in certain circumstances be required by law to retain your personal information after our research has been completed. In this case your personal information will continue to be protected in accordance with this Policy. If we destroy personal information we will do so by taking reasonable steps and using up-to-date techniques and processes.
Security of Information
SEC Newgate Research will take reasonable steps to protect your personally identifiable information as you transmit your information from your computer to our website and to protect such information from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.
However, you should keep in mind that the transmission of information over the Internet is not completely secure or error-free. In particular, email sent to or from this website may not be secure, and you should therefore take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail.
Miscellaneous
In this policy “personal information” has the same meaning as under the Privacy Act.
This policy has been effective from 12 March 2014, with the latest update to the policy published on 3 July 2024. We may change this policy from time to time. Although we intend to observe this Privacy Policy at all times, it is not legally binding on SEC Newgate Research in any way. From time to time we may regard it as necessary or desirable to act outside the policy. SEC Newgate Research may do so, subject only to any other applicable contractual rights you have and any statutory rights you have under the Privacy Act or other applicable legislation.