1.0 Overview
This policy outlines how Russell Marketing Research, Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary Focus Crossroads maintains the confidentiality of information provided by respondents and protects the identity of respondents. Respondents’ personally identifying information (PII) will not be revealed to any third-party without explicit consent from the respondent. Information provided by respondents is collected only for the specified research purposes and will not be used in a manner other than for these purposes. No personally identifiable information will be used for subsequent non-research purposes such as direct marketing, list-building, credit rating, fund-raising or other marketing activities relating to those individual respondents.
2.0 Scope
All employees at Russell Marketing Research are aware of this policy and are expected to adhere to this policy. Only authorized employees will have access to any personal information provided by respondents. This information will only be used for data analysis, quality control purposes, or in the manner previously agreed to by the respondent. If personal information is provided to a third party we require that they maintain an equivalent level of security.
3.0 Privacy Policy
Russell Marketing Research assures respondents who participate in our studies, regardless of methodology, of the following:
· All information provided by respondents will be treated as strictly confidential and Russell Marketing Research will protect the privacy of respondents.
· The information respondents provide will only be used for research purposes.
· Russell Marketing Research will obtain respondents’ consent prior to releasing any personal information to any third party.
· Russell Marketing Research will never sell personal information to anyone.
· Russell Marketing Research will respect a respondent’s decision if they do not want to participate in a study, if they would like to discontinue taking a study, and if they do not want answer any specific questions within a study.
3.1 Information Collected by Russell Marketing Research
Russell Marketing Research will clearly identify itself as the research company conducting the study on all surveys. The reason for contacting the respondent will be explained before the survey begins and all respondents will be given the option to participate or not. In addition, respondents will be informed of how any personal information collecting during the course of the survey will be used and respondents can choose not to provide this information. Respondents always have the option not to answer any question or to stop taking the survey.
During the survey we will ask respondents for demographic information (e.g., gender, age, income level, region), and other information related to interests, hobbies, and product/technology usage. This information is only used for analytic purposes.
On occasion, Russell Marketing Research offers incentives (e.g., cash, gift cards, entry into a sweepstakes) to respondents who qualify for and complete a survey. To provide the incentive we may require respondents to provide their full name, email address, phone number, and/or mailing address so that we can send the incentive, we will only ask for the information required to provide the respondent with an incentive. The respondent will always be given the option to choose not to provide the required information to receive the incentive, in which case the incentive will not be provided. When providing gift cards as an incentive Russell Marketing Research partners with Virtual Incentives, a third party reward service, to send out the gift card to respondents. If no incentive is being offered, we will collect only the information necessary for quality assurance purposes. The respondent will always be made aware of the reason the information is being requested.
3.1.2 Children’s Privacy
Russell Marketing Research complies with all applicable national and international children’s privacy regulations. For surveys conducted in person or by telephone Russell Marketing Research complies with the age of majority laws within the respondent’s state or country and never knowingly speaks to a minor without obtaining the appropriate parental consent. The minor’s parent or guardian will be made aware of the nature of the study and what, if any, personally identifiable information will be needed from the child and the reasons for which this information is being requested. This information will always be collected from the parent/guardian and not from the minor. The parent/guardian can refuse to provide this information.
Russell Marketing Research also feels it is very important to protect children’s online privacy and never knowingly invite children under the age of 13 to participate in research studies without taking all appropriate measures to obtain parental consents.
Russell Marketing Research complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”). We do not collect any personal information directly from children under the age of 13. For validation reasons we may need to collect the names of individuals who participate in one of our market research studies, but we will never ask children under 13 for their name. There may be occasions where we ask our adult respondents if there are any children under 13 residing in their households who would like to participate in a survey. In these cases, we will never collect any personally identifiable information from the child, nor will we combine the information collected from the child with any personally identifiable information.
3.2 How Information is Used and Confidentiality of Responses
3.2.1 Emails
Russell Marketing Research does not send unsolicited commercial emails. When we send emails on behalf of a client, we require the client to only provide us with lists of potential respondents who have:
- Agreed to be contacted by a third party on our client’s behalf
- Provided the email address to our client themselves and are the owners of the email addresses. No email address are harvested from another source.
- Subscribed to our client’s email list. All email owners who have asked to be unsubscribed from our client’s email contact list will not be emailed.
Russell Marketing Research is not bound by the terms of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (“CAN-SPAM”), however we voluntarily comply with the key privacy and disclosure provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act, including:
- Providing truthful sender information
- Including a physical address for Russell Marketing Research
- Providing a clear and simple method for opt-out which is always honored
All survey invitations sent via email will include all of the following pieces of information:
- A general description of the purpose of the project
- Estimated length of interview
- Statement of confidentiality and anonymity of each respondent’s responses
- Closing date for completed responses
- Access to full disclosure of incentive terms and conditions applying to the project
- An explanation if the invitation is sent out on behalf of another company
- The opportunity to unsubscribe or opt out of future research
- Appropriate privacy policy or statement
3.2.2 Sharing Information
Russell Marketing Research gathers, aggregates, and analyzes information from our survey respondents as part of our survey research process. We provide the results of our research (which contain no personally identifiable information) only to the client who commissioned the study with the responses from all respondents combined. Our clients include domestic and international governmental agencies, major corporations, and other organizations. Survey responses are valuable in guiding the development and designing of products and services. Survey responses are often used by our clients to make decisions on key issues.
Russell Marketing Research will never sell, share, rent or intentionally transfer your name, address, telephone number or e-mail address to our clients, other market research companies, direct marketing companies or anyone else without full consent from the respondent. We use the information you provide to us for internal purposes, and share it only for the limited purposes described here:
- The respondent requests or explicitly consents to sharing their identifying information and individual responses with the third parties for a specified purpose.
- Responses are provided to a third party who is contractually bound to keep the information disclosed confidential and use it only for research or statistical purposes as stated above.
- Responses may be shared in the rare case that the information provided is subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, orders or for similar legal or regulatory requirements.
Russell Marketing Research follows local laws and industry best practices with respect to the release of personally identifiable information. In the rare cases that clients and other third parties receive personally identifiable information they are required to sign and abide by our standards for maintaining the security and confidentiality of personally identifying information. Any client or third party must indicate that their use of the data will be limited to research purposes and the information will remain confidential. In these rare cases, the respondent will be notified and required to give their permission for Russell Marketing Research to transfer their personally identifying information to a third party prior to the third party receiving the information.
Russell Marketing Research uses NeverBounce to verify and clean email lists provided by our clients. In addition, we may use Benchmark email to distributes surveys via email to potential respondents. When providing incentives to respondents via email Russell Marketing Research partners with Virtual Incentives, a third party reward service, to send out the gift card to respondents.
3.3 Use of Cookies, Log Files and Other Technologies On Our Website
Russell Marketing Research uses a cookie on our survey site to help provide our respondents with a better survey experience. We never store any personal information on any cookies we use. Cookies are small text files that are stored on a computer by a website that assigns a numerical user ID and stores certain information about your online browsing. Cookies may be deleted by clearing your browser cache. Cookies placed by Russell Marketing Research will expire after 30 days.
Russell Marketing Research’s cookies make up a small part of a digital fingerprinting technique used to prevent fraudulent respondents. This technology analyzes information and data obtained from a respondent’s computer’s web browser and from other publicly available data points, including for example the technical settings of the respondent’s computer and the characteristics of the computer (e.g., geolocation, browser settings, fonts). This data is used to create a unique identifier assigned to the computer (digital fingerprint). This digital fingerprint is an alpha-numeric ID which we retain. We do not retain the information analyzed by the technology to create the unique identifier. The technology does not disrupt or interfere with the respondent’s use or control of the computer and it does not alter, modify or change the settings of the computer. There may be occasions we use other technologies to assist our clients to ensure the integrity of survey results.
We may do the following in order to protect and ensure the integrity of our survey results:
- Link or associate a respondent’s unique identifier to the respondent and any of the information the respondent provides to us
- Share a respondent’s unique identifier with our clients and with other research companies
- Receive or obtain a unique identifier linked to a respondent from a third party, including without limitation a sample or panel provider or a client of our company.
Any unique identifier linked to a specific respondent will be protected in accordance with this privacy policy. We shall use and distribute the technology in an ethical and professional manner in accordance with our privacy policy, any statements and/or disclosures made by our company to the respondent, and applicable laws and industry codes.
3.4 Recording of Interviews
Russell Marketing Research may record or monitor interviews conducted by telephone or in-person. The respondent will always be notified at the start of the phone or in-person interview if the interview is being recorded or monitored. We use the recordings and monitor the interviews for quality assurance purposes and to verify the information stated by the respondent during the course of the interview. If the recordings will be used for any other the purpose, the respondent will be notified before the recordings are made and must give us their permission to use the recording in this manner. The respondent can opt not continue with the interview at any time.
3.5 Safety and Security of Information
The Russell Marketing Research website and servers have security measures in place to prevent the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. We employ standard technology and internal processes to protect the personal information of respondents. We take reasonable steps to ensure the security of all information that is collected.
Russell Marketing Research also safeguards all information it collects through its websites from unauthorized access. Only authorized Russell Marketing Research employees or agents carrying out permitted business functions are allowed to access this information.
In the unlikely event that Russell Marketing Research suffers a breach of its security systems and an individual or entity gains unauthorized access to any information stored on Russell Marketing Research servers, Russell Marketing Research will immediately investigate the security breach, and will provide prompt notice to any individual whose information was affected.
A respondent’s survey responses may be collected, stored or processed by our affiliated companies or non-affiliated service providers. All subcontractors are contractually bound to keep any information they collect and disclose to us or we collect and disclose to them confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are equivalent to our own. All subcontractors that we utilize have signed off on an agreement with our company and are expected to comply with this policy.
Only select, authorized employees have access to process the data collected and maintain databases that store respondent personal and contact information. All employees are made aware of our policies and procedures regarding confidentiality, security, and privacy, and we emphasize the importance of complying with them.
3.6 International Data Transfer
Please note a respondent’s personal information may be transferred to or processed in countries other than the respondent’s resident country. These countries may have data protection laws which differ to those of the respondent’s country of residence. Russell Marketing Research’s servers are located in the United States, and our third-party service providers (including Microsoft Azure & Amazon Web Services) and partners operate world-wide.
Appropriate safeguards are in place with all third-party service providers and partners. Further details may be provided upon request.
3.7 Accuracy of Personal Information
Russell Marketing Research makes reasonable efforts to keep personal information that is used on a regular basis accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information that has been made available to us. We rely on respondents to help Russell Marketing Research keep all personal information accurate, complete and current by answering questions honestly. Access can be given to any respondent, allowing them to review and correct any inaccuracies that may be present within our database.
To request access to personal information that we have access to, we require that respondents submit a request to Russell Marketing Research. Respondents may be able to access their personal information and correct, add, or delete the information where it is inaccurate, except as follows:
- Providing access to the respondent’s personal information would be likely to reveal personal information about others;
- Russell Marketing Research would redact any information that could reveal information about others
- Disclosing the information would reveal the confidential commercial information of Russell Marketing Research or its clients.
- Russell Marketing Research would redact any information that would reveal confidential commercial information
- The burden or expense of providing access would be disproportionate to the risks to the respondent’s privacy in the case in question.
We will strive to provide a respondent’s requested personal information within 30 days of receiving the request. If Russell Marketing Research cannot fulfil this request, a written explanation of denial will be sent to the respondent.
3.8 Notification of Material Changes to This Policy
Changes may be made to this policy if Russell Marketing Research feels necessary. After changes are made, the date of the revision will be stated on this policy. If we will use respondents’ personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify respondents via email or phone. If respondents have opted out of being contacted again, then they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner.
3.9 Data Subject Requests
Russell Marketing Research recognizes the right of individuals to access their personal information. This information can be provided to a respondent upon request thorough a secure means. Requests will be responded to within 30 days. Please submit all data subject requests to our internal DPO department
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: (800) 217-3098
Mail: One Meadowlands Plaza
Ste 1001
East Rutherford, NJ 07073
3.10 How to Contact Us
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: (800) 217-3098
Mail: One Meadowlands Plaza
Ste 1001
East Rutherford, NJ 07073
If you have any questions or concerns regarding an incentive payment please contact as by email at [email protected].
3.11 Updates
The last update to this policy was made on Tuesday, October 15, 2024.