Versus Research Limited (VRL)
Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Versus Research Limited (VRL) has adopted this Privacy Policy to ensure that we handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. If you have any questions about this policy, you can contact our Privacy Officer using the Contact form on our website, or by emailing info@versus.co.nz.
Personal information
"Personal information" means information about an identifiable individual — for example, your name, email address, or any survey response that could reasonably identify you, whether on its own or combined with other information we hold.
The information that VRL collects from you is held in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and, in particular, the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) contained in that Act. VRL may collect your personal information in a variety of ways when you request or use our products or services, including but not limited to surveys or feedback you've provided to VRL (including live chats, posts on our social media sites, and online qualitative interviews).
In some projects, we are provided with your contact details (such as your email address) by the client who has commissioned the research — for example, a local council contacting residents about a consultation or survey. Where this happens, the client remains responsible for how they originally collected and hold your details, and we rely on their own collection notice or privacy statement to you. We will still tell you directly, when we contact you, who we are, why we are contacting you, who commissioned the research, and that taking part is voluntary. You can ask to be removed from any contact list at any time by replying to our email, using the unsubscribe option (where provided), or contacting our Privacy Officer.
VRL may use any personal information we collect for the following purposes:
verifying your identity where relevant to a project (for example, confirming eligibility to take part in a survey);
improving the research experience for our participants, including monitoring, assessing and following up on survey queries and complaints;
developing or improving our online qualitative research, online quantitative surveys and social media pages;
administering prize draws for competitions you have entered;
conducting market and social research on behalf of our clients.
We collect only the personal information reasonably necessary for these purposes, and where practicable we will tell you at the time of collection why we are collecting it.
Security of your information
VRL takes all reasonable steps to ensure that all information we collect is accurate and stored in a secure environment, accessed only by authorised persons for legitimate business purposes.
Where a third party (including our IT support provider) has remote access to the systems or servers on which we hold your information, that access is restricted to authorised personnel for maintenance and support purposes, is logged, and is governed by a confidentiality or data processing agreement with VRL. If any such provider is based overseas, the safeguards described under "Sending information overseas" below also apply to them.
VRL will not keep personal information for longer than is required for the purposes for which it may lawfully be used. In general, survey and research data containing identifiable personal information is retained only for the life of the relevant project and any agreed reporting or audit period, and in line with Research Association of New Zealand guidelines is typically kept for up to two years in electronic form and six months in hard copy, after which it is securely deleted or de-identified. Where a client engagement specifies a different retention period, that period will apply. Backup copies of our systems, held by our IT support provider for business continuity purposes, may be retained for longer than this as a standard feature of managed backup services.
Sending information overseas
Some of the tools and service providers VRL uses to deliver research services (for example, survey hosting platforms, data analysis platforms, video-conferencing tools, or cloud storage) may store or process personal information on servers located outside New Zealand.
Where VRL discloses personal information to an overseas person or organisation, we will only do so where:
the overseas recipient is subject to privacy laws that, overall, provide comparable safeguards to those in the Privacy Act 2020; or
VRL has entered into a contract with the recipient requiring them to handle the information in a way that, overall, provides comparable safeguards; or
you have authorised the disclosure after being informed that the recipient may not be subject to comparable privacy safeguards; or
another exception under Information Privacy Principle 12 of the Privacy Act 2020 applies.
Where an overseas provider holds information solely to store or process it on VRL's behalf (for example, cloud hosting), and does not use it for its own purposes, this is not treated as a "disclosure" under the Privacy Act, but VRL still takes reasonable steps to ensure that provider protects your information appropriately.
Disclosure of your information
VRL will not disclose, sell, distribute or share your personal information with third parties, except in accordance with the strict exceptions contained in the Privacy Act, or where authorisation has been given by you for that disclosure. In order to fulfil the purposes listed above, VRL may disclose your information to (but not limited to) the following:
agents, contractors or suppliers we contract with who are responsible for carrying out on our behalf any of the purposes listed above, including market research companies, research and insight agencies, mail houses, IT support providers, and providers who host or maintain data centres, service platforms and other infrastructure and systems on our behalf;
government or law enforcement agencies, where required or authorised by law;
our legal, financial and other professional service advisors;
our client who commissioned the research you participated in — generally in de-identified or aggregated form, unless you have agreed to identifiable information being shared (for example, for prize draw fulfilment).
Where VRL discloses your personal information to third parties for the above purposes, this will be on a strictly confidential basis.
If something goes wrong
If VRL becomes aware of a privacy breach involving your personal information that has caused, or is likely to cause, you serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as soon as practicable, in line with our obligations under the Privacy Act 2020.
Access to your information
You may request an inspection, update or correction of the personal information VRL holds about you by putting the request in writing addressed to the Privacy Officer at:
Versus Research Limited
PO Box 5516
Frankton
Hamilton 3242
To contact us, please use the Contact form on our website, or email info@versus.co.nz.
We will take steps to check the identity of the person making any such request, and will provide you with access to your information where it is held in such a way that it can be readily retrieved. We will respond to your request as soon as reasonably practicable and, in any event, within the timeframes required by the Privacy Act 2020.
How do you make a privacy complaint?
If you have a complaint about the privacy of the information we hold about you, please contact our Privacy Officer at the details listed above. We will try to resolve your complaint straight away. If it is complex, or involves other parties, we will investigate it for you. In any event, we will acknowledge your complaint in writing within two business days of receipt.
If you are not satisfied with the way we've handled your complaint and your concerns are unresolved following completion of our internal process, you can refer your concern to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (see www.privacy.org.nz for further information about their complaints process).
Children and young people
Where a survey or research project may involve participants under 18, VRL will take reasonable steps to obtain appropriate parental or guardian consent, or to otherwise comply with any additional requirements set by our client or an ethics approval process for that project.
Cookies and our website
Our website may use cookies or similar analytics tools to understand how visitors use our site. You can manage or disable cookies through your browser settings; doing so may affect how parts of the site function.
Changes to this policy
VRL reserves the right to update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any change we make applies from the date the updated Privacy Policy is posted on our website.
Last updated: [2/09/26]