Stormy Lake Privacy Policy
Whether you're completing a survey, participating in a dialogic session, or corresponding with us about a project, we need you to be honest and open with us. Along with the hope for honesty comes our responsibility to safeguard your information: the thoughts you share with us, the personal information that helps us understand who you are, and the details we need to contact you. When you participate in our research, you agree to the terms of our privacy policy and consent to the collection and use of your personal information according to the conditions set forth in this policy.
In order to keep your information safe, we adhere to the following policies:
(1) Responses are confidential. When you complete a survey or participate in a dialogic session or interview, we will not pair your responses with information that identifies you, except to group your responses together with similar people.
(2) Where possible, responses are reported in aggregate. We pool together the responses of people during analysis and report on these aggregate responses. For example, we might report on responses based on broad age categories, income brackets, or organizational roles (e.g., internal vs. external stakeholders). For some types of data, like open-ended responses, aggregation is not possible. Instead, we match the responses by theme or with demographic or organizational categories rather than identifying individual participants.
(3) We don't collect or keep data that we don't need. All information collected is intended to further our project deliverables. The best way to keep personally identifying information safe is not to ask for it. We will only ask for personally identifying information for the purposes of research, either because we need it for you to be able to participate or to better understand who you are.
(4) We only share data with third parties when required for research purposes. Your responses will be shared with the research sponsor after removing personally identifying information such as your name or contact details but including survey responses such as age and gender. Your data may also be shared with third parties when completing activities online (e.g., your data will pass through Zoom's servers during a meeting over Zoom). We will never sell your data to third parties. Reasonable steps have been taken to prevent the accidental disclosure of personal information.
(5) You can always opt out. At any point during or after participating in research with us, you can ask that your responses be removed from our data. You may decline to continue participating in our research at any point in the process.
(6) Respondent Rights. Stormy Lake Consulting follows the research standards laid out by the Canadian Research Insights Council. You can read more about your rights as a respondent here.
Contact Information
If you have questions or concerns about our privacy policy or the protection of your personal information, please contact bob@stormylakeconsulting.com.
Changes to this Policy
We reserve the right to alter this policy statement at any time by posting the revised policy on this website. This statement and the policies outlined herein are not intended to and do not create any contractual or legal rights in or on behalf of any party.