Effective Date: May 27, 2020
This Privacy Policy covers the site www.sunshinestateresearch.org and all data provided while taking surveys, during the participant enrollment process or in response to a profile update survey is collected and processed by Sunshine State Research (“us,” “our,” or “Sunshine State Research”). Sunshine State Research conducts its surveys using tools created by the vendor Alchemer. Alchemer’s Privacy Policy and its Terms of Service here. Sunshine State Research is an online opinion research panel for individuals who are no younger than eighteen (18) years of age at the time of enrollment. You may always submit any concerns regarding this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices to us. If you choose to write us an email, please reference the Privacy Policy in your subject line. Sunshine State Research will attempt to respond to all reasonable concerns and inquiries expeditiously.
Survey participant email opt-in
Once you receive notification of the survey from us, you will opt in, using a code or other identifier, to actually participate in the study. Within the fulfillment of our duties to you under the Terms of Service, and once you elect to participate, you will periodically be sent email communications from Sunshine State Research inviting you to participate in surveys as well as occasional Member Service emails, If you no longer want to receive these email communications, you must request that Sunshine State Research discontinue sending you email or cancel your membership as described in the Our opt-out policy section below.
The information we collect and how we use it
Our site’s registration form requires you to give us enrollment contact information including your full name, mailing address, and email address to participate in our surveys and to enable us to respond to other information requests from you. This information is compulsory to register you as a member of the Sunshine State Research. You can choose not to provide this information but doing so will make you unable to enroll in the Sunshine State Research program and ineligible for any rewards. Additionally, we may use the data you provide to enable the fielding of studies. When we do so, we may share this information with third party clients who contracted with us to perform those studies.
Personally identifiable information
In some cases, Sunshine State Research may conduct surveys or collect other information on behalf of third parties who have contracted with us. Sunshine State Research may provide personally identifiable information to these third party clients, but no third party will be permitted to use this data to attempt to sell you anything or email you without your permission or registration. Additionally, Sunshine State Research may provide personally identifiable information to other third party providers and partners for purposes including without limitation:
- – The augmentation of member information with statistical information available from a third party, such as voting history, consumer data and responses to surveys run by other organizations;
- – Independent auditing and/or verification of respondent data for quality control purposes;
- – The suppression of member contact information from email communications that a member has not consented to receiving;
- – Providing administrative or other services to us, such as administering emails, databases, or other management or marketing functions;
- – Providing services to us related to rewards or giveaways for members’ participation in the surveys. When you redeem a reward or giveaway, we will share your name, email address, and other information as necessary for the third party to provide that service.
All third parties will be required to safeguard your data and will not be permitted to use it for commercial purposes without your consent or registration at their site. This will be enforced either by relying upon existing privacy policy, terms of service, or other policies put in in place by these third parties or by entering into confidentiality agreements with us regarding use of your data, but in some cases, in order to redeem awards or other offers, you will need to provide your information directly to the third party and your information will then be governed by their privacy policy and privacy practices, and not by this privacy policy.
We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our website.
In the event that Sunshine State Research goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. You will be notified via email or prominent notice on our website and by becoming a member, consent to such transfer of your information.
Surveys
Sunshine State Research may invite you to participate in online surveys. The information requested in these surveys may include, but is not limited to, your opinions, demographics, and activities. These surveys may also request information defined as sensitive (e.g. data directly or indirectly revealing racial and ethnic origins, political, philosophical or religious opinions, trade union affiliation, health or sexual life). The information collected by these surveys is used in connection with Sunshine State Research research sponsored by third-party entities, research directly undertaken by third-party entities, and by Sunshine State Research to modify the Sunshine State Research program and website. We reserve the right to share this information in an individually identifiable form, an anonymous singular summary, or in aggregate form with third parties for this purpose.
Survey participant enrollment process
When you complete your first Sunshine State Research, we will ask for your email address. In addition to using this email address to provide you with any reward, we will enroll you in the Sunshine State Research Panel. By providing your email address, you consent to become a member of this Panel. No further action is required from you to become or remain a member of the Panel. As a member of a panel, we will email you with future opportunities to take surveys. We reserve the right to exclude you or remove you from the Panel at any time for any reason in our sole discretion.
Supplemental information
In order to provide survey opportunities to you, we may on occasion supplement the personally identifiable information you submitted to us with information from third party sources. By becoming a member or participating in our surveys, you consent to our using a third party supplier to verify your identity. We may purchase or otherwise receive marketing data from third parties and add it to our existing user database to provide enriched analytical data for our clients’ use.
Log files
We may gather certain information automatically and store it in secure log files. This information may include but is not limited to internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser types, Internet service providers (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating systems, date/time stamps and/or clickstream data.
Sunshine State Research’s use of cookies
A cookie is simply a small text file containing information about the user that is placed by a website on the user’s hard drive. Sunshine State Research may place persistent cookies, java, scripts or tags on your computer when access the Sunshine State Research website, and may place a session cookie on your computer while you are participating in a survey or viewing the website without logging in. Persistent cookies are used to store your email address and encrypted password. Sunshine State Research uses this cookie to recognize you when you visit our website Sunshine State Research may use session cookies to maintain your session state across user requests. This type of cookie may be used to record when you complete a survey, how much of the survey you complete, the country you are viewing and what language you are using to view the website. We may also use cookies to track certain information about you based upon your activity on our site or on a third party’s site. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your IP address. Sunshine State Research may occasionally utilize email Web beacons to monitor email deliverability. We reserve the right to share this information with third parties.
From time to time, we may allow a third-party media service to display content on our site. These third-party media services may use cookies within their content (e.g., to analyze trends, administer some part of the site, track users’ movements, etc.) The use of cookies by these third parties shall be governed by their respective privacy policies. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.
You can refuse to accept cookies, free of charge, by adjusting the privacy settings of your Web browser software. However, if you do not allow cookies from Sunshine State Research, you may not be able to use all of the features on this website.
Advanced cookies
The advanced cookie tracks the online patterns of Panel Members. The advanced cookie, which may be placed by Sunshine State Research or in conjunction with a third party, incorporates a key which can identify tags contained in certain online content relating to our clients and their products and services.
If a Member views a page containing any content that includes the tag, the key will send us an update confirming that the Member has viewed the page containing this content.
In addition, some advanced cookies can be used to target you with advertisement related to research for ad-effectiveness. These advertisements will only be displayed for research purposes and not for Sunshine State Research-specific advertising or advertising campaigns unrelated to a specific research projects.
Certain Web pages or Web-based advertisements that you view may be tagged by Sunshine State Research, and in some cases, data collected on tagged content may be combined with survey answers that you provide.
Other websites
This site may contain links to other Internet sites that are not operated or controlled by Sunshine State Research. We cannot control and are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites. Any interaction on social media or other third-party websites is governed not by this privacy policy but by the terms of use and privacy policy of the particular platform.
Non-electronic communications with you
We occasionally may employ other companies to perform reward fulfillment mailings on our behalf. They may have access to the personal information needed to fulfill their functions, but may not use it for any other purposes. We or our partners may occasionally communicate non-electronically with you for research purposes.
Our opt-out policy
If you would like to stop receiving Sunshine State Research Panel membership emails, non-electronic mailings, or to opt of Panel membership, you may request that your membership be cancelled by emailing us at info@sunshinestateresearch.org. You may also click the unsubscribe link in any email we send you to stop receiving emails from us.
How to delete your personal information
To delete your personally identifiable information from the Sunshine State Research database, please email us at info@sunshinestateresearch.org. We will delete your data and/or respond to your request within 30 days of its submission. We will retain your personal information unless your account is deactivated or terminated. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.
Data security measures
This site has security measures (including online and offline physical, electronic and managerial safeguards) in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information, including your email address, under our control. As with any transmission over the Internet; however, there is always some element of risk involved in sending personal information online. If you have any questions about the security at our website, please email us at info@sunshinestateresearch.org.
We are committed to children’s privacy
Sunshine State Research takes children’s privacy seriously and we do not seek to collect individually identifiable information about children under 13 years of age. Sunshine State Research only enrolls members who are 18 years of age or older.
If Sunshine State Research learns that a child under the age of 13 has submitted personally identifiable information online, in contravention of these measures, Sunshine State Research will take all reasonable measures to delete such information from its databases and to not use such information for any purpose.
Changes to the privacy policy
We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting an amended version of the statement to the Sunshine State Research website and updating the effective date accordingly. Please refer to this policy regularly.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this website, you can email us at info@sunshinestateresearch.org.