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Privacy policy
This Research Information Privacy Policy (RIPP) constitutes the Social Research Centre’s privacy policy. It outlines how the Social Research Centre protects your privacy rights and upholds its obligations under privacy law, when handling your personal information.
Please click on the headings below to reveal further information and to download our website privacy policy.
Introduction
The Social Research Centre (ACN 096 153 212) respects and upholds your rights under the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a member of the Australian Data and Insights association (ADIA), the Social Research Centre is also required to adhere to the Privacy (Market and Social Research) Code 2021 (Code). For more information about the Privacy Act, the APP and the Code please visit the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) website: http://www.oaic.gov.au/.
The RIPP 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. In the course of our research activities, we undertake research throughout Australia, and where it is applicable, we adhere and are subject to the relevant state and territory privacy and health records legislation.
Personal Information
As part of our social research we are likely to collect your personal information. The Privacy Act defines personal information as: “information or an opinion, whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.”
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) cites the following as common examples: individual’s name, signature, address, telephone number, date of birth, and commentary or opinion about a person. We may collect any of the above information as well as any other personal information that is sufficiently relevant to the topic of the social research.
Given the nature of the social research work conducted by the Social Research Centre, it is not always practicable for research participants to remain anonymous or to use pseudonyms.
Sensitive Information
- racial or ethnic origin
- political opinions, membership of a political association
- religious beliefs or affiliations
- philosophical beliefs
- membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union
- sexual orientation or practices
- criminal record, and
- health information about an individual, genetic information (that is not otherwise health information).”
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.
Collection of information
The Social Research Centre will generally collect your personal and/or sensitive information directly from you in the course of you participating in our research and/or evaluations.
We may also from time to time receive personal and/or sensitive information about you from third parties for the purpose of conducting social research on behalf of that organisation.
We may also collect personal information from public phone directories, commercial or consumer listings, data organisations and respondent recruitment agencies.
We may also collect personal information if you are expecting a response from us. For example, if you have questions about a specific social research project or if you wish to make a privacy complaint.
Data protection and data security
The Social Research Centre 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.
Because the privacy of your information is so important to us, the Social Research Centre uses the ISO 27001 Information Security Management framework to apply global best practices in data security. Every year we are audited by ISO-Experts to retain our accreditation (current certification number: ISOEX-110045-2). This International Standard provides guidance and specifies requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an Information Security Management System.
However, you should keep in mind that the transmission of information over the Internet is never completely secure or error-free. In particular, e-mail 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. The Social Research Centre uses a secure portal for the completion of online surveys.
Use of your information
We will only use and disclose your personal and research information for the purpose of conducting our social research and in accordance with this RIPP.
We will not use or disclose your personal information for the purpose of advertising, promotions or direct marketing activities.
If you have participated in our social research, we will only re-contact you if you were informed of this prior to collecting your personal information or if we have valid reasons to believe a genuine research concern warrants re-contact.
Disclosure
We will not disclose outside of the research team, any personal 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 law or court/tribunal order.
In the course of conducting social research, we may rely on third party service providers to host or store the data we collect. We take all reasonable steps to ensure that third party service providers comply (or substantially similar to) our RIPP, the Privacy Act and the APPs and we put safeguards in place to ensure your Personal Information remains protected and we put safeguards in place to ensure your Personal Information remains protected.
Openness
You have the right to request access to any personal information we hold about you. This includes confirmation as to whether or not your personal data is being processed, where and for what purpose. 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 and endeavour to provide you with a suitable range of choices as to how access is provided. You have the right to request for your identifiable research information to be destroyed or de-identified.
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. You also have the right to receive your personal data and the right to transmit that data to another controller.
Complaints
If you have any questions about the RIPP 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 at :
Privacy Officer
The Social Research Centre
(03) 9236 8500
privacy@srcentre.com.au
We will respond within 30 days 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 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 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
Fax: +61 2 9284 9666
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Our website
- 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 the Social Research Centre 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 Social Research Centre site is to candidates; the type of browser used – this is important for browser specific coding; and
- in order to optimise the Social Research Centre web site and better understand it’s 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 web site 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 Social Research Centre website does not use persistent cookies. Upon closing your browser, the session cookie set by this web site is destroyed and no personal information is maintained which might identify you should you visit our web site at a later date.
Full details on our Website Privacy Policy can be found here:
Download our Website Privacy Policy Data disposal
The Social Research Centre will destroy or de-identify your personal information as soon as reasonably practicable once it is no longer required to complete the social research for which it was collected. 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.
Miscellaneous
This policy has been effective from the original date of publication July 2023. This policy is reviewed periodically. Although we intend to observe this RIPP at all times, it is not legally binding on the Social Research Centre in any way. From time to time, we may regard it as necessary or desirable to act outside the policy. The Social Research Centre 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.