Privacy policy

Who are we and why we collect personal data

Ardent Fieldwork Limited is a market research fieldwork agency that recruits individuals to participate in research projects on behalf of our clients. The nature of our business means that we collect personal data for our legitimate business interest.

Your privacy is of great importance to us and this document outlines how Ardent collects, processes and safeguards the information you provide to us in accordance with UK data protection laws.

How you can contact us

If you have any queries concerning this policy, you can contact us in the following ways:

• Telephone: 0203 3711467
• Email: dataprotection@ardentmr.com 
• Post: Ardent Fieldwork Ltd, 63 Church Hill Road, Barnet EN4 8SY, United Kingdom

The personal data we collect

When we contact you on behalf of our clients to participate in a market research study, we collect or confirm information about you. Only information that is relevant to the research project is collected, and it is only what you chose to provide to us. It could include:

• Personal data, such as full name, age and date of birth, gender, address and postcode, email address and telephone numbers
• Sensitive personal data, such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs or beliefs of a similar nature, your physical or medical condition, trade union membership or sexual life
• Business contact information, such as company name, job title and department
• Other personal data, such as the number of children in the household, devices owned, pets in the household and so forth
• Research project details, such as the time, date, location and topic of the market research you participate in

How information is collected

We collect information:

• In person, via our approved and appointed recruiters. who take you through screening questionnaires
• Over the telephone, when you speak to our experienced interviewers. Telephone conversations with you may be recorded.
• From your replies to emails and text messages that we send to you
• Through paper-based forms / diaries that you have completed for us
• Via online forums that you participate in as part of a project
• Through other organisations, where:
  • You have given consent for them to share information on you with us
  • Or organisations similar to ours, that are lawfully permitted to share information on you with us, even our gaining without your consent

How information is used

Before you take part in research with us, we use the information we know about you to:

• Check whether you are a right match for a particular research study
• Invite you to participate in the research study
• Confirm details (i.e. date, time and venue) of the research you participate in
• Answer your queries or questions
• Send reminders, either prior or during research to encourage attendance or participation
• Conduct research with you

Once research is complete, we use the information to:

• Validate answers/views you provide, if you have consented to us doing so
• Administer incentives for taking part in a research study
• Report back to the client that commissioned the study, maintaining anonymity by aggregating responses of other participants in the research
• Determine what groups of people think about certain things more than others on an aggregated level
• Update details and ensure that our records of your personal data are correct. This is applicable to those who have agreed to take part in an ongoing research project.
• Verify your attendance levels in market research projects to ensure you do not exceed levels recommended by the Market Research Society
• Monitor and train staff by checking and improving how we handle our communication with you

Who we share information with

All of your information and survey responses are treated as confidential. Unless you consent to sharing your identifying information and individual responses, we will never intentionally disclose it to the client that commissioned the study or any third parties.

However, as our business has the role of matching individuals to research projects on behalf of our clients, we often have to share your information with other people or organisations.

Your information may be disclosed, in accordance with our legal data protection and privacy obligations, to:

• Members of staff at Ardent who:
  • Pre-screen respondents before they take part in a research project
  • Conduct research with respondents over the phone
  • Send out incentives once research is completed
• The clients that commissioned the research to:
  • Demonstrate that quotas, set as part of the project, have been met
  • Allow them to get in touch with the respondent where they are conducting the research directly (i.e. for in-home interviews or telephone interviews)
  • Send out incentives once research is completed
• Other companies that perform certain functions for us, like data processors. These companies will be aware of and will comply with our instructions and data protection laws, and we make sure that appropriate controls are in place.
• New business partners that we may gain over time, as when Ardent enters a joint venture or business merger or is sold
• Professional advisors, such as our lawyers or technology consultants, when they need it to give us advice
• The Police, local authorities, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the courts and any other government authority, if they ask us to do so and if we are legally obliged to do so.

Managing your information

When we collect information about you, we do so only to the extent that is reasonably necessary to serve our legitimate business purposes.

While we work hard to ensure we have the most accurate, up to date and complete information about you, the accuracy and integrity of the data we collect, be it personal information or your responses to surveys, depends on you and your honesty. Consequently, please ensure you provide information that is correct, and we will work hard to ensure the security, integrity, accuracy and privacy of the information you have provided is maintained.

If, for any reason you believe the information we have about you is inaccurate, please contact us (see the How to contact us section above).

International transfer of your information

We are a UK-based company, but from time to time we may organise recruitment for clients that are based abroad. When you take part in an international project, the information we collect about you may be transferred to, stored and used by clients at premises in other countries.

While we aim to ensure our international clients maintain your information with the highest regard for security, data protection laws do vary between countries. As a result, any transfer of information we make to these international clients will mean the information is available to their governing bodies and other authorities under their laws.

Protection of your information

Ardent has appropriate technical, administrative and physical measures in place to protect information, including, without limitation, personal data, received or collected by us.

We review, monitor and evaluate our privacy practices and protection systems on a regular basis. Only certain employees have access to the personal data you provide us and are only granted access for data analysis and quality control purposes.

Information retention period

Unless a longer retention period is required or permitted 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 for it to be deleted.

When you have asked us not to contact you again, we will keep the contact information (email address and/or telephone number) you provided to ensure that we do not contact you, on the basis of legitimate interest.

Your rights

When we have possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have a number of rights:

• Right to be informed: you have a right to know how we use your personal information
• 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: you have the right to ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records
• Right to restriction of processing, where certain conditions apply
• Right to object: you have the right to object to certain types of processing, such as direct marketing
• Right to data portability: you have the right to obtain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling: you have the right not to be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing

Privacy in relation to our clients and suppliers

Ardent retains the contact details of people we work with for business purposes, as a legitimate interest. To support our long-term business interests, we will retain that information until it is deemed out of date or we receive a request to delete it from our client or supplier.

Privacy in relation to our employees

When people apply for a position with Ardent, we process information necessary for the recruitment process, i.e. we contact you to discuss the role and to assess your suitability. If the application is unsuccessful, we delete the data we hold about the applicant after six months, unless there is a business justification for longer retention.

For employees, we process information necessary for their employment, for legal, contractual and legitimate interest (e.g. performance monitoring) reasons. We retain employment records for 7 years after termination of the contract, and key records to provide references or any information that may be needed to support legal activities after that time.

Further information about your privacy

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates data protection and privacy matters in the UK. Its website is www.ico.org/for-the-public, which provides more information to the public on data protection matters.

If you have any queries concerning this policy, or how we use your information please do not hesitate to get in touch with us using the details provided above.

Updates to this privacy policy

This privacy policy will be updated by the data controller when necessary. Always refer to this page for the updated version.

Last updated: June 2022

Cookie policy

This policy explains what cookies are, how Ardent uses them on our website and what you can do to manage how they are used.

Cookies and how they benefit you

Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us:

• Make our website work as you would expect
• Remember your settings during and between visits
• Improve the speed/security of the site
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
• Make our marketing more efficient, ultimately helping us to offer the service we do at the price we do

Granting us permission to use cookies.

If the settings on your browser that you are using to view this website are adjusted to accept cookies we take this and your continued use of our website to mean that you are fine with this. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site, you can learn how to do this below, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

How long do cookies last?

When a web server sends a cookie, it asks your browser to keep that particular cookie until a certain date and time. These dates can be:

• Some date in the future, which might be a few minutes or a few hours from now (to track something like your shopping cart in an online store). The cookie might expire many years in the future to keep track of your browser for a long time.
• When you close your browser, which is called a session cookie. The next time you start your browser, these will have vanished.
• Some date in the past, which is how the server asks a browser to remove a previously-stored cookie.

Turning cookies off

You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies. Doing so, however, will likely limit the functionality of ours and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.