McDonnell-Phillips

innovation and continuity since 1992

Privacy

McDonnell-Phillips understands the importance of privacy and is committed to maintaining the privacy of our clients, their staff and customers and individuals participating in our projects. Our approach to managing information is informed by and complies with the requirements of:

Based on these requirements, we have developed this Privacy Policy. This policy is routinely reviewed and updated to ensure contemporary best practice in managing privacy and information.

We apply privacy requirements to all aspects of collecting, storing, using and disclosing information gathered during our projects. During and after projects, we aim to take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal and business information is secure and protected from unauthorised access and use. Our team is diligent in ensuring that personal and business information is not inadvertently released.
In our work, no personal or business information is disclosed, without the explicit consent of the person providing that information.

Application of privacy requirements to research information

For our research projects, clients may provide contact details for staff, managers or previous/potential customers. From these and other sources, we may then approach individuals to participate in our research studies.  We often need to gather personal information from respondents  - this can include name, address and other contact details, attitudes, beliefs and sometimes more sensitive information (such as memberships of trade or professional associations, organisational level, career plans, racial or ethnic origin, health information etc).
We use the information supplied by our clients or gathered directly from individuals for the specific and individual research project ONLY. In all instances, provision of personal information is the choice of the respondent and respondents can choose not to supply any part of this personal information. Gathered information is NOT used for any other purpose – it is NOT sold nor shared with any third party.
For the duration of the study, personal information is stored in a secure location. Once the study is complete, information is kept for one year and then typically destroyed in a controlled way (inline with our QA processes) i.e. it will be removed from the data base and destroyed electronically and through controlled secure hard copy destruction.
While the information collected from individuals is the foundation of our research work, the value of our studies is in amalgamating this into aggregated data, and then, identifying themes and trends across the complete dataset. In instances where personal information could be used to identify individuals, this information is only reported in aggregate form so that the identity of individuals is protected.
Infrequently, there can be instances (such as some business to business research) where our client may wish to have further research or business contact with the respondent. If this is the case, this is fully disclosed to the potential respondent prior to participating in the research.

Application of privacy requirements to online research

On occasions, our team will conduct online surveys of staff or customers for our clients. Participation in these studies is voluntary, not mandatory.
To administer online surveys, McDonnell-Phillips may use names and email addresses supplied by clients or gather these from web sites or other sources. These contact details are used to monitor responses to the survey and generate reminders. This information is deleted once the survey closes and is not used for any other purpose.
Email addresses supplied to invite participation may be used to generate a unique url identifier (so that we can control sample input) and to control the participant’s ability to restart the survey. Other personal information is not used in this process.
All our online surveys are hosted on our independent web site – www.mcdp.com.au. When a respondent participates in the online survey, our server makes a record of this visit and logs server address, link used, date and time of visit to the site, pages accessed and documents viewed and the type of browser used. This data is collected for study and web site administration, including monitoring to prevent security breaches. It is not used for any other purpose. No attempt will be made to record activity, identify users or their browsing activities.

Application of privacy requirements to our web site

When someone visits our web site, our server makes a record of the server address, pages visited, date and time of visit. This data is collected for web site administration only and will not be used for any other purpose. If you send us an enquiry, we will ask for you contact details and this will only be used to respond to the enquiry.

Conclusion

McDonnell-Phillips values privacy and the information given to us by organisations and individuals.  Once submitted, any identifying personal or business information is only held for the duration of the research and then follow-up period. Information is aggregated for analysis to identify differences across demographic groups/clusters and themes/trends. Unless specifically agreed to, personal or identifying information is not disclosed nor passed from us to our client organisations.

If you have any enquiries regarding privacy or this policy, please call 07 3876 0222 or email privacy@mcdp.com.au.