National Survey for Wales 2023-24 test: privacy notice

The National Survey for Wales is carried out for the Welsh Government and its partners by Kantar Public and Beaufort Research.  The survey gathers information on people’s views and lives in order to help develop policies and decide how services are delivered. 

This survey test involves telephone or in-home interviews with about 1,000 people to test changes to the survey to make sure they work well.  There is also a short online section at the end of the interview for anyone who uses the internet. 

The Welsh Government is the data controller for the research and receives the information collected by Kantar Public and Beaufort Research. The information from this survey test is used to check whether the survey processes work as we want them to, and to improve how the survey is run in the future. The survey will collect personal data as well as data which is not considered personal data under UK GDPR.

Previous survey publications can be found on the National Survey web pages.

Your participation in this survey test is completely voluntary. However, your views and experiences are important. Welsh Government will use the results of the test to make sure the survey works correctly so that in future they, local councils, and NHS Wales can take action on issues that affect you and people in your area.

The contact details for the National Survey team at Welsh Government are:
E-mail address: surveys@gov.wales 
Telephone number: 0300 025 2021

The contact for this research at Kantar Public is Stuart Grant
E-mail address: stuart.grant@kantar.com
Telephone number: 020 7076 1600

The contact for this research at Beaufort Research is Chris Timmins
E-mail address: chris@beaufortresearch.co.uk
Telephone number: 029 2037 8565

Personal data is defined under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) as ‘any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified by reference to an identifier’.

Participant addresses are randomly selected from the Royal Mail’s publicly available list of all addresses in Wales, and households are sent a letter inviting you to participate. As part of the letter, you are requested to provide a telephone number, and optionally your name and email if you are content to provide them at this stage.

If you choose to provide your name, telephone number or email address via the online registration portal or to complete the online section of the survey, this will be done via an online survey provider called Forsta Plus. Forsta Plus will capture data you provide by filling in forms on the site. Forsta Plus may collect information about your computer, including device type, screen resolution, operating system and browser type and version, for system administration, if available. This is used to generate statistical data about users' browsing actions. If you contact Forsta Plus or Kantar Public, they may keep a record of that correspondence.

Kantar Public will attempt to obtain phone numbers associated with these randomly selected addresses from commercially available sources called Sagacity and Data8, who provide a facility to match telephone numbers against the addresses in the sample. Addresses will also be matched with databases of phone numbers such as the online phonebook. 

Where a phone number is provided by a household then Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will use that to contact you to undertake the survey, otherwise Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will use a phone number they have matched. If no phone number is available, Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will send an interviewer to the address to arrange an interview (either face to face or by phone).

Your participation in the research is voluntary and if you do not wish to take part or be sent reminders then please reply to the invitation letter and your details will be removed. 

If you take part in the survey, then Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will be collecting the following additional personal information: 

• Name 
• Full postal address (which is added to the dataset once contact is made)
• Email address 
• Date of birth 
• Sexual orientation
• Ethnic group
• Religion
• Health and illness, including height and weight, and whether pregnant

Interviews may be observed or recorded solely for training and monitoring purposes by research team members from Kantar Public, from Beaufort Research, and/or from Welsh Government. 

Survey respondents are offered a voucher as a thank-you for taking part in the survey.  If you choose for the voucher to be sent to you by email, then this will be sent out by Kantar Public or Beaufort Research.  If you would like a postal voucher, then Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will record your details and pass your name and postal address securely to Greens Digital, who send out the vouchers. Greens Digital will only use your details to send you the voucher and will not share your details with anyone else. They will securely delete your details within one month of issuing the voucher.  Greens Digital will hold your information securely. 

If you raise a query or complaint and provide personal data requesting a response, the researcher will forward the request only to the relevant official and subsequently delete it.  Any queries or complaints will not form part of the research data at any point.

The lawful basis for processing information in this data collection exercise is our public task; that is, exercising our official authority to undertake the core role and functions of the Welsh Government. Some of the information we collect on the survey is called ‘special category data’ (information about ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and health) and the lawful basis for processing this information is that it is for statistical or research purposes.

Participation is completely voluntary. However, tests such as this are very important because they enable us to make sure that the survey works well, to undertake experiments which will improve the survey in future, and to understand the effects of changes to the survey design.  Your participation will therefore help shape how the survey is carried out for years to come and ensure that the data collected in future years helps make sure decisions are based on sound evidence. The information collected in future survey years, for example, might be used:

• to find out how satisfied people are with their local area, and about issues in their local area;
• to look at how we can help people who are not using the internet to get access and to feel confident using it; and
• to check whether people find it easy to make appointments at the GP surgery, and if not then what particular barriers we need to tackle.

Personal information provided to Kantar Public and Beaufort Research is always stored on a secure server. The data can only be accessed by a limited number of researchers working on this project. Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will only use this data for research purposes.  Kantar Public is accredited as meeting ISO27001 and conducts external penetration testing and Beaufort Research is accredited as meeting Cyber Essentials Plus standards.

When conducting surveys and for you to register your interest in taking part, Kantar Public and Beaufort Research use a survey software programme called Forsta Plus to collect data including survey responses and contact information. We have ensured that Forsta Plus is UK GDPR compliant and meets our expectations in terms of the security of any data collected via the software. 

Kantar Public subcontract some data processing and preparation to a separate company, BMR. Your personal data, with name and contact information removed, may be processed by BMR. BMR will work within Kantar Public’s secure virtual environment, so that no data will be transferred to BMR. BMR’s systems and devices are required to meet high standards of data security.

Kantar Public, Beaufort Research, BMR, and Greens Digital have procedures to deal with any suspected data security breaches. If a suspected breach occurs that affects your information, Kantar Public or Beaufort Research will report this to the Welsh Government who will notify you and any applicable regulator where we are legally required to do so. 

Any personal data provided to Welsh Government is held on secure servers, and for this project a folder has been created that has access restricted only to the National Survey research team. The information collected will only be used to check how the survey is working, not to draw conclusions about individual people.

If the survey test results are reported on, this would be in an anonymised form. Reports would not contain any information that makes individuals identifiable. Reports would be published at https://www.gov.wales/national-survey-wales

Kantar Public and Beaufort Research will hold personal data during the contract period, and will delete any personal data, including your contact details, within six months of the dataset sign-off. Sign-off takes place around three months after the end of the fieldwork period, which runs from November to December. Personal data held by Forsta Plus will be deleted within one month of data delivery to the Welsh Government.  Where you choose to receive a postal voucher, the voucher supply company Greens Digital will hold your contact details post-interview to send this to you and will delete your contact details within one month of voucher dispatch.

Any recordings of interviews used as part of training will be deleted within 90 days of the interview taking place, and will be used solely for quality assurance purposes by the research team.

Kantar Public will provide Welsh Government with the full dataset but excluding name, postal address email address and telephone number.

Under UK GDPR, in relation to the personal information you provide as part of this survey you have the following rights:

• To access a copy of your own data; 
• For us to rectify inaccuracies in that data;
• To object to or restrict processing (in certain circumstances);
• For your data to be ‘erased’ (in certain circumstances); and
• To lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who is the independent regulator for data protection.

The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office are:

Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF

Phone: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk

If you have any further questions about how the data provided as part of this study will be used by the Welsh Government or wish to exercise your rights using the UK General Data Protection Regulation, please contact:

The National Survey team
E-mail address: surveys@gov.wales
Telephone number: 0300 025 2021

The Welsh Government’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at:

Welsh Government,
Cathays Park,
Cardiff,
CF10 3NQ

Email: DataProtectionOfficer@gov.wales.