Privacy Policy

Introduction 

This survey is conducted by the Armenian Institute, funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation.  The Armenian Institute is the data processor and the data controller of data collected in this survey.  

By participating in this survey, you agree to the use of your personal information as described in this policy. We ask you to read this privacy policy carefully. 

For the online component of the Armenian Diaspora Survey (henceforth ADS), we collect the responses through Survey Monkey, a specialist service for collecting online survey responses.                        

For the purpose of this policy, the definition of ‘personal information’ is any information that relates to and can identify a living individual. 

Lawful Collection and Use 

The purpose for collecting the data is to conduct research, according to the research objectives stated in the introduction to the survey.  

We do not intend to collect personal data as part of the data collection for the survey. You may include some personal information as part of your responses to open-ended questions in the survey. If your response does contain personal information, we will identify it and remove all identifying information before processing it further. 

When we contact you, either by email or in person, we do so to invite you to participate in the survey.  

When you participate in our survey, we will ask you for a range of information, including, for example, your personal opinions, and demographic information, such as your age and household composition. You may decline to answer any questions or withdraw from participation in a study at any time. 

We will never misrepresent ourselves or what we are doing. If you receive an email that concerns you, purporting to be from us, please let us know as shown below in ‘How to contact us’.      

Third Parties and Data Transfer Across Borders 

You can be assured that we will protect your privacy. We will not make your personal information available to anyone without your agreement unless it is for research purposes only or if required by law. This includes your name and e-mail address. 

Your personal information may be collected, stored, transferred or processed by third party service providers for research-related purposes, such as data processing and data storage. They are all 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.  

Where these transfers are across borders or outside the EEA and UK we shall put safeguards in place to ensure the transfer is made by a legitimate method for the purposes of EU and UK data protection law and secure. 

Confidentiality and Industry Requirements 

We take appropriate technological and organisational measures to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. Our security procedures are consistent with generally accepted commercial standards used to protect personal information. 

All our employees are contractually obliged to follow our policies and procedures regarding confidentiality, security and privacy. 

We voluntarily adhere to the following standards and industry requirements:

    • UK Market Research Society professional code of conduct;

    • ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research.

 Accuracy 

We take all reasonable steps to keep personal information in our possession or control, which is used on an on-going basis, accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information made available to us by you and/or by our client. 

We rely on you to help us keep your personal information accurate, complete and current by answering our questions honestly and you are responsible for ensuring that the data controller (which may be us or - more often - our client) is notified of any changes to your personal information. 

Children’s Data Collection 

We never knowingly invite children under the age of 16 years to participate in the survey.  

Special Category Data

In our survey we collect special category data as defined by the General Data Protection Regulation, namely information about your ethnic origin, political opinions, religious and spiritual beliefs. We will only collect this kind of data if you have given your explicit consent to do so. 

Rights of Individuals 

To request access to personal data that we hold about you, you should submit your request in writing to the e-mail address or postal address shown below in ‘How to contact us’.           

You have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

    • Right to change your mind and to withdraw your consent

    • Right to access your personal data

    • Right to rectify your personal data

    • Right to erase your personal data from our systems

    • Right to port your personal data (portability right)

    • Right to restrict processing of your personal data

    • Right to object to the processing of your personal data

 We shall also notify third parties to whom we have transferred your personal data of any changes that we make on your request. Note that while we communicate to these third parties, we are not responsible for the actions taken by these third parties to answer your request. You may be able to access your personal data held by these third parties and correct, amend or delete it where it is inaccurate. 

Data Storage and Retention 

Personal information will be retained only for such period as is needed for data processing, in this case we shall retain data for no longer than 3 months after the data collection, unless otherwise required to do so by law.  

Notification of Material Changes 

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and it may be amended from time to time. We will always have the most up-to-date policy on this web page. We will record when the policy was last revised.           

Date created: 20/08/2019

Last revised: 26/05/2021 

How to Contact Us 

Questions regarding this policy, complaints about our practices and access requests should be directed to the Fieldwork Team via email at office@armeniandiasporasurvey.com or in writing to: Armenian Institute, 1 Onslow Street, London EC1N 8AS, United Kingdom. You can also contact the ADS Data Protection Officer Dr Hayk Gyuzalyan at gyuzalyan@gmail.com.

Complaints 

We will investigate all complaints and attempt to resolve those that we find are justified. If necessary, we will amend our policies and procedures to ensure that other individuals do not experience the same problem.

Please contact us using the details above. 

If you are not happy with our response, you also have the right to complain to the Data Protection Authority. You can direct any complaints about our practices in writing to the UK Data Protection Authority: 

Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
Wycliffe House Water Lane 
Wilmslow 
Cheshire 
SK9 5AF