Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES)
This privacy notice explains how your personal data will be processed for the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES).
The University of Hertfordshire (UH) is the data controller for your personal data and is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (the ‘GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
The surveys are carried out by Advance HE on behalf of Higher Education providers, including UH.
How we collect and use your information
The purpose of this survey is to gain insight from students about their postgraduate research experience. All responses collected through our student experience surveys are stored by Jisc (data processor), on behalf of UH. Jisc will share the survey responses with Advance HE (data processor). Your responses will be held securely by UH, Jisc and Advance HE.
All participating institutions, including UH, have agreed not to identify any individuals when reporting their results internally or externally, and will ensure that no individuals can be identified by those results. The full dataset will be available to Advance HE and its sub-processors in order to conduct national level research and analysis.
The types of information we collect
We will use personal data held on our student records system and data provided directly by you in response to the survey. To administer the survey and make it easier to complete, some data that you have already supplied to the University is preloaded. This data is about your course, age range, country of domicile, and personal email address as listed on your student record. We also ask you to provide some demographic data, which constitutes special category data (e.g., ethnic background, gender status), in the survey itself, but this is optional.
On what basis do you process my data?
Your personal data will be used only by relevant UH staff where the data is necessary for them to undertake their designated role. Access to the raw data is restricted to the Doctoral College survey team for analysis purposes. After that, all staff within the institution will only have access to anonymised aggregated results.
We process your personal data on the basis of your consent. You can withdraw your consent to have your survey responses used in the ways described here and we will destroy your individual survey response, however we will keep the anonymised, aggregate data which does not identify you within our datasets.
You are able to withdraw your consent at any time in the future. Should you wish to withdraw your consent, please contact research-degrees@herts.ac.uk.
How long is your information kept?
We will remove any identifying information from our downloaded raw data immediately. Identifying data is held within the JISC system for as long as is required to capture and issue the results. We will retain an anonymised set of data after the survey closes for use in the analysis of your postgraduate research experience.
Your rights
Under the Data Protection Laws, you have certain rights, including the right to request access to your data, request correction of your data and request erasure of your data. Depending on the circumstances and the nature of your request, it may not be possible for us to process these rights fully. Further information on your rights is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/your-data-protection-rights/
How to exercise your data rights?
If you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@herts.ac.uk.
How to ask questions or raise concerns?
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about how we use or handle your personal data, please contact the Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@herts.ac.uk.
You also have the right to complain directly to the Information Commissioner at: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or via post at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.