PRIVACY POLICY

Kindred Research Limited take the security of personal data and other confidential information very seriously and are committed to complying with applicable data protection legislation. Personal data is any information that can be used, either by itself or together with other information, to identify an individual. We treat all information we may hold about you as confidential information, whether it falls within the definition of personal data, or otherwise.

Please read our privacy policy carefully to get a clear understanding of how we collect, use, protect or otherwise handle your personal data and confidential information either through our website(s), or otherwise through your engagement with Kindred.

Any questions regarding this policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to domi@kindredresearch.uk

 

REVISIONS

We may make changes to this Privacy Notice and will let you know about these changes by displaying them on our website (kindredresearch.uk). Changes will begin to have effect at the time they are displayed. The version of the Privacy Notice that will apply to you is the one which is current at the time we contact you.

 

WHO DO WE COLLECT PERSONAL DATA FROM?

 We collect personal data from the following categories of people:

  • Participants in market research projects (for example online surveys, interviews or focus group discussions)

  • Client or prospective client;

  • Supplier or prospective supplier.

  • Employees and prospective employees

 

WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE PROCESS?

For participants taking part in a market research, we may process the following types of information:  

  • Full name

  • Phone number

  • Email address

  • Postal address

  • Potentially bank details (if we need to arrange payment)

  • Other demographic information such as profession and age

  • Product information you may have with one of our clients

  • Your opinions

  • Photos of you

  • Audio and video recordings taken as part of research

We may also collect your IP address and which type of web browser you are using if you participate in an online market research survey. 

We may also collect and process sensitive personal data (such as gender, ethnicity, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union activities, physical or mental health or sexuality) as required for a particular market research. In this case, we will obtain your explicit consent and provide a full description of how it will be used and where it will be located.

 

HOW IS MY DATA COLLECTED?

Depending on the project, Kindred Research Limited may collect your personal information in a number of ways.  These include: 

  • From one of our clients, who you are a customer of or have had contact with in the past

  • From a research panel that you have signed up to in the past and for which you have consented your personal information to be used for invitations to future market research studies

  • From one of our third parties who have previously made contact to invite you to conduct market research activities

HOW WILL IT BE USED?

Your personal data is used by us to assist in our market research activities, and to bring key insights or stories and testimonials to life. These activities include:

  • Contacting you to invite you to participate in a market research or contacting you to enable us to run market research projects (e.g. getting your name and contact details to allow us to confirm session times)

  • Recording your research responses as either audio / video files or as text files, depending on the research methodology used

  • Sharing with carefully selected third party vendors to conduct additional processing activities relating only to the research survey you have participated in

  • Reviewing your research responses in combination with the responses obtained from others in order to identify trends and key messages

  • Feedback to our client anonymised findings we believe to be of interest to them

  • Respond to any enquiries or requests you make to us

  • Carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us

  • Seeking your feedback on the service we provide

  • Marketing our services to clients or prospective clients/enquirers

  • Communicating with suppliers or prospective suppliers

  • Informing you about something, like a change to our policies or services

If we would like to use images, videos or audio for uses outside of the immediate requirements of the research, we get your consent for this usage and ask you to sign specific documents, so that you have absolutely clarity around the purpose of the activity. 

WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION?

It is our intention to be as transparent with you as possible with regards to who we may need to share your personal data with. We only use your data for the purposes of conducting necessary and legitimate additional market research activities.

 

MORE DETAIL

During the course of a research programme your personal information may be shared with the following types of organisation:

  • Recruiters (who will invite you to participate in research on our behalf)

  • Fieldwork agencies (who may conduct interviews on our behalf)

  • Research viewing facilities (who provide rooms, recording facilities and coordination services for our interviews)

  • Online platforms (which we use to host online research activities)

  • Video streaming partners (if we conduct any live streaming of any face-to-face interviews)

  • Our clients (only if you are a customer and we have told you upfront that is what we planning to do)

  • Transcribers (who may transcribe recordings)

  • Camera operators and video editors (who may perform editing activities on our behalf)

  • Law enforcement (only if required to do so)

  • Online community managers 

For market research purposes, Kindred utilises a carefully selected network of third party vendors for market research related data processing and analysis. These organisations are contractually obliged to solely use your information for research and statistical purposes and safeguard your information from unauthorised disclosure or modification.  They are also contractually obliged to delete your information in line with an agreed retention period.

Kindred may need to transfer your data outside of the EU in order to complete research activities or fulfil our contractual requirements. We will always make sure acceptable cross border transfer mechanisms are in place (e.g. EU-US Privacy Shield for US companies, or EU standard contractual clauses for transfers to other organisations outside the EU). 

 

HOW LONG WILL WE KEEP YOUR DATA?

Unless a longer retention period is required by our client, or by law, we will only hold your personal information on our systems for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy or until you request it is deleted. 

Most personal information held about you by us in order to conduct our market research and content generation activities will be retained for 6 months after the completion of the work.  This is to ensure we can respond to any validation requests from our clients or otherwise complete the provision of our services to our clients. The only personal data belonging to you that is not deleted after 6 months is your name and date of attendance which is securely stored in a separate database for a further 2 years. This is for legitimate internal quality control purposes. 

 

HOW DO WE SECURE YOUR DATA?

We take information security very seriously at Kindred and have invested a lot of resource in designing and implementing systems in order to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your personal data. In particular, we only work with suppliers who are GDPR compliant and use  encryption, usernames and passwords and other relevant security measures when transferring data. The Kindred team are trained in correct data security protocols and endeavour to keep consistently high and compliant standards.

 

COOKIES

On rare occasions, we may use cookies (a cookie is a piece of information that web servers send to your browser file when you access a website, then when you come back to a website again, that website will detect whether you have cookies on your browser file) and other similar devices sparingly for quality control, validation, or to prevent bothersome repeat surveying. You can configure your browser to notify you when cookies are being placed on your computer or to reject cookies altogether. 

 

HOW YOU CAN ACCESS AND UPDATE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

 At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have the following rights:

  • Right of access: you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.

  • Right of rectification: you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.

  • Right to be forgotten: in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.

  • Right to object: you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing. 

Please contact domi@kindredresearch.uk  if you would like to exercise any of these rights. 

 

REVIEW OF THIS POLICY

We keep this policy under regular review. This policy was last updated in February 2025