Privacy for Participants
We care about your privacy.
NZ’s Privacy Act applies to PFI (Staff and contractors) when we deal with personal information.
Personal information is information about an identifiable individual.
This privacy policy tells you about:
- • The kinds of personal information we may collect and hold about you.
- • Why we collect, hold, use and share that personal information.
- • How we get it.
- • Who we might share it with outside of PFI and the reason for sharing information.
- • How we store your personal information
Our business and what we do
Our business is to source people willing to be involved in research projects. There are specific criteria set by our clients for a particular project. Projects vary from providing feedback on new apps, sharing your opinions about living in your city, new communication material or new product development ideas. We collect, hold, and use the information you share to help us do that. We’re likely to collect basic personal information such as your name, address, phone number and email address.
PFI collects additional information from participants as part of the research recruitment process. From here, we can determine whether a particular project is relevant to you, or whether you meet our client criteria for a particular project.
Both participation in any project and the amount of information shared with PFI is voluntary.
All recruiters are guided by NZ privacy legislation. Personal information is also protected by the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007
PFI does not use any information for purposes other than determining whether a person is suitable for a particular project.
When our staff call you about a research project, you respond to an email or survey, we collect information that you supply to us, and this may include:
- • Your current contact details and occupation
- • Your opinions and feedback on your use of certain brands, products or services.
- • Information regarding your personal or professional interests and experience with the services that our clients offer.
- • We may also collect personal information from you including ethnicity, political options, religious beliefs, household income and living situation.
Sensitive information will only be collected with your prior consent and only if it is directly related to, or reasonably necessary for the research recruitment we conduct.
Here are some other ways we might interact with you and update your information:
- • You receive a phone call from one of our team about a project and details are updated from that conversation.
- • You have completed an email survey.
- • You reply to an email invitation and answer questions in your reply.
- • You visit our website or social media pages and contact us.
How We Use Your Information
We will use the information you provide to contact you for relevant projects and to determine whether you meet the criteria for a specific project.
When you register with PFI you will never be approached to buy products or merchandise of any sort. We will not use or disclose your personally identifiable information for the purpose of advertising, promotions or direct marketing activities.
How we store your personal information
We take reasonable steps to secure the personal information we hold from risks such as loss and interference and unauthorised access or use. For example, our systems are password protected and we use security measures for the internet.
Personal information may be electronically archived. Our database is hosted on New Zealand based cloud servers.
Holding Your Information
We keep your information on our database for as long as you would like to be on it. If you no longer want to participate you can unsubscribe at any time, simply by sending us an email or phoning. We will remove your email immediately and change your status so that you are not contacted. Your record and the information we hold will be deleted.
If you wish to be removed from our database, there are no questions asked.
Stored information is accessible by PFI staff or contractors, all of whom have signed confidentiality clauses as part of their employment contract.
Our suppliers operate under professional codes of practice.
How we share your information
We may send data of recruited participants to clients (in NZ or overseas). This is to provide our client with a “snapshot” of the participants in a group and the answers provided at the time of recruitment. The data we send may include personal information. All data is sent by one of several secure transfer options. There is no personal data sent by email.
PFI aims to limit the amount of identifiable information provided to any client and will only send contact details as necessary.
We do not disclose any personal information to our clients for the purpose of allowing them to contact participants directly for any purpose other than involvement in a current project.
Final research reports do not name individuals involved in the research.
We also undertake not to supply any details, either entirely or in part, to any third parties, other than as required during normal course of business. We do not share information unless:
- • it directly relates to answers given during the participant selection process (e.g. answers to screener questions and is provided to our client)
- • it directly relates to identifying you as an attendee of a market research activity (e.g. your name, suburb, occupation, and other relevant details for the activity being undertaken); or
- • it is required or authorised by law.
Personal information provided to PFI by a third party
There may be occasions when a company has asked PFI to act as their agent in recruiting customers or contacts for research.We take reasonable steps to destroy personal information when we no longer need it for the reasons it was provided, ie any information supplied to PFI by a third party (one of the clients we are working with) is deleted from our system at the completion of each research project.
Bank details
Any requests for bank details are made on a project basis. This is requested solely for the purpose of incentive payment which will be managed either by PFI or our client. We do not add these details to your permanent record so if you have provided these to us in the past for a previous payment, you will be asked to provide these details for any subsequent project.
Accuracy & Access to your Information
PFI strives to keep your personally identifiable information accurate, but we do rely you on you to let us know if your circumstances change. You can request to update or correct your details at any time by contacting PFI.
Research with Children
When children under the age of 17 are involved in research, this is done with parental consent. Prior to confirming a child’s involvement in a research project PFI will speak with a parent or guardian.
Questions and Complaints
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
Phone: 09 529 5540 to speak with the Director
Email: rachel@people4info.co.nz
We may change this policy from time to time. Although we intend to observe the intent of this Privacy Policy at all times, it is not legally binding on PFI (2005) Ltd in any way.
Updates to our Policy
We regularly review and update our privacy policy so it’s accurate and relevant.
This privacy policy was last updated 01/05/2024