Our Privacy Commitment

This Privacy Policy sets forth the collection, use and disclosure of information by NORC in connection with NORC’s website, NORC.org (as defined herein). Your use of NORC’s website is completely voluntary. NORC strives to conform its privacy practices to applicable laws, codes, and regulations, and the codes of standards of applicable market and opinion survey research associations. 

NORC (collectively referred to herein as “NORC”, “we”, “our” or “us”), recognizes the importance of protecting personal data we may collect from visitors and any other individual or entity (“Users”, “you”, or “your”) who visit our web sites. This Privacy Policy applies to data collection by NORC and shall apply to your use of the website, www.NORC.org and other NORC-related sites, applications, software, communications, capabilities and services (“Services”) accessible on or by any top-level NORC domain owned by us (each, a “Site” and collectively the “Sites”), but excluding services that state that they are offered under a different privacy policy.

Our Privacy Policy explains: (1) what information may we collect; (2) why we collect it; (3) how we use that information; (4) how we may share it; (5) the choices we offer, including how to access and update information; (6) and the measures we take to keep your information safe. Specifically, our Privacy Policy covers the following topics:

1.     When This Privacy Policy Applies

2.     Information May We Collect

3.     How We Use Information We Collect

4.     Sale of Personal Information

5.     Our Legal Basis for Collecting Personal Data

6.     Information We Share

7.     Your Failure to Provide Personal Data

8.     Our Retention of Your Personal Data

9.     Your Rights and Choices

10.  Privacy Rights Specific to GDPR

11.  Our Opt-in/Opt-out Policy

12.  Third Party Links

13.  International Transfer

14.  How We Protect Personal Data

15.  Children

16.  Changes to this Privacy Policy

17.  How to Contact Us

Please familiarize yourself with our privacy practices and let us know if you have any questions. By using the Sites, you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Sites.

Irrespective of which country you live in, you authorize us to transfer, store, and use your information in the United States, and any other country where we operate. In some of these countries, the privacy and data protection laws and rules regarding when government authorities may access data may vary from those in the country where you live. Learn more about our data transfer operations in the “International Transfer” section below. If you do not agree to the transfer, storage and use of your information in the United States, and any other country where we operate, please do not use the Sites or Services.

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, please submit a request to privacy@NORC.org.

Our Privacy Policy applies to all of the Services offered by NORC and its affiliates, including some NORC partners, and Services offered on other sites, but excludes services that have separate privacy policies that do not incorporate this Privacy Policy.

Our Privacy Policy does not apply to services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may be displayed to you, or other sites linked from our Services. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the information practices of other companies and organizations who advertise our Services, and who may use cookies, pixel tags and other technologies to serve and offer relevant ads.

We collect information, including personal data, to provide better services to all our Users. We use the term “Personal Data” to refer to any information that identifies or can be used to identify you. Common examples of Personal Data include: full name, email address, digital identity, such as a login name or handle, information about your device, and certain metadata.

“Sensitive Personal Data” refers to a smaller subset of Personal Data which is considered more sensitive to the individual, such as race and ethnic origin,

political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, genetic or biometric information, physical or mental health information, medical insurance data, or sexual orientation. 

When you use our Services, we collect Personal Data in the following ways:

1. Information You Give to Us

You may choose to provide us with Personal Data about yourself, including your name, company name, phone number, address, job title, industry, country of residence, and email address by completing forms on our website, such as when you agree to participate in a survey conducted by NORC. You may also choose to provide us with employment and education information when you apply for a job at NORC via our Site.

In some instances, you may elect to provide us with location and address information. You may also provide us with Personal Data about yourself when you report a problem or have a question about our services.

The Sites offer interactive and social features that permit you to submit content and communicate with us. You may provide Personal Data to us when you post information in these interactive and social features. Please note that your postings in some areas of the Sites may be publicly accessible or accessible to other Users.

2. Information We Obtain from Your Use of Our Services

We collect certain information automatically, such as your operating system version, browser type, and internet service provider. We also collect information about your interaction with the Services, such as creating or logging into your account, or opening or interacting with the Services on Your mobile device. When you use our Site, we automatically collect and store this information in service logs. This includes: details of how you used our Site; Internet protocol address; cookies that uniquely identify your browser, the referring web page and pages visited.  We may also collect and process information about your actual location. The information we collect automatically is statistical data and may or may not include Personal Data, but we may maintain it or associate it with Personal Data we collect in other ways or receive from third parties.

3. Cookies and Similar Technologies

NORC may use third parties to provide services and certain functionality to NORC. NORC may use contracts with such third parties to control their use of cookies and to limit their use of cookies to the limited purposes set forth in the contracts. 

We and our partners use various technologies to collect and store information when you visit one of our services, and this may include using cookies or similar technologies to identify your browser or device. We also use these technologies to collect and store information when you interact with services from our partner. Our third-party advertising and analytics partners include Google Analytics and similar partners.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our services. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our services.  For more information about our use of cookies, including details on how to opt-out of certain cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

Web Beacons. Pages of our services or our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count Users who have visited those pages or opened an e-mail and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).

Clickstream Data. Clickstream data is information collected by our computers when you request Web pages from the Sites. Clickstream data may include information such as the page served, the time spent viewing the page, source of the request, type of browser making the request, the preceding page viewed and similar information. Clickstream data permits us to analyze how visitors arrive at the Sites, what type of content is popular, what type of visitors in the aggregate are interested in particular kinds of content on the Sites.

Watermarking.  Generally, watermarking involves placing a technology or file on your device or computer to identify that it has previously been used to register with or access NORC’s website. Watermarking is used for quality control and validation purposes and fraud detection and/or prevention purposes. NORC may engage in watermarking activities directly or through a third party vendor. 

Log Files. NORC may automatically gather and store certain information in log files, including, without limitation, data available from your web browser, including, without limitation, IP Address, browser type, internet service provider, referring/exiting pages, operating system, date/time stamp and click stream data. 

4. NORC research participant

If you have been contacted by NORC or invited to participate in our research, you may be asked to provide personal information. To learn more about NORC’s privacy policy for information supplied to NORC by research participants, please see the research participant policy listed below. 

We use your Personal Data in ways that are compatible with the purposes for which it was collected or authorized by you, including for the following purposes:

• To present, operate or improve the Site and Services, including analysis of Site activity;
• To inform you about Services and products available from NORC;
• To authorize access to our Sites and Services;
• To provide, maintain, administer or expand the Services, performing business analyses, or for other internal purposes to support, improve or enhance our business, the Services, and other products and services we offer;
• To customize or tailor your experience of the Services;
• To improve our Site and Services;
• To secure our Services, including to authenticate Users;
• To use statistical information that we collect in any way permitted by law, including from third parties in connection with their commercial and marketing efforts;
• To respond to and support Users regarding their use of the Sites and Services;
• To comply with all applicable legal requirements;
• To perform data analysis and testing;
• To investigate possible fraud or other violations of this Privacy Policy and/or attempts to harm our Users;
• To resolve disputes;
• To otherwise fulfill the purpose for which the information was provided.

We use the information we collect from our Sites to provide, maintain, and improve them, to develop new services, and to protect NORC and our Users.

We use information collected from cookies and other technologies, to improve your User experience and the overall quality of our services. We may use your Personal Data to see which web pages you visit at our Site, which web site you visited before coming to our Site, and where you go after you leave our Site. We can then develop statistics that help us understand how our visitors use our Site and how to improve it.  We may also use the information we obtain about you in other ways for which we provide specific notice at the time of collection.

We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those set out in this Privacy Policy.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have not sold any Personal Information.

Whenever we collect Personal Data from you, we may do so on the following legal bases:

• Your consent to such collection and use;
• Out of necessity for the performance of an agreement between us and you, such as your agreement to use our Services or your request for Services;
• Our legitimate business interest, including but not limited to the following circumstances where collecting or using Personal Data is necessary for:
• Intra-organization transfers for administrative purposes;
• Service development and enhancement, where the processing enables NORC to enhance, modify, personalize, or otherwise improve our services and communications for the benefit of our Users, and to better understand how people interact with our Sites;
• Fraud detection and prevention;
• Enhancement of our cybersecurity, including improving the security of our network and information systems; and
• General business operations and diligence;

Provided that, in each circumstance, we will weigh the necessity of our processing for the purpose against your privacy and confidentiality interests, including taking into account your reasonable expectations, the impact of processing, and any safeguards which are or could be put in place. In all circumstances, we will limit such processing for our legitimate business interest to what is necessary for its purposes.

We do not share personal data with companies, organizations and individuals outside of NORC unless one of the following circumstances applies:

• With your consent. We will share Personal Data with companies, organizations or individuals outside of NORC when we have your consent to do so.
• For Legal Reasons. We will share Personal Data with companies, organizations or individuals outside of NORC if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
  • meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
  • detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
  • protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of NORC, our Users or  the public as required or permitted by law.

We attempt to notify Users about legal demands for their Personal Data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

• Non-Personal and Aggregate Site Use Information. NORC may compile and share your information in aggregated form (i.e., in a manner that would not personally identify you) or in de-identified form so that it cannot reasonably be used to identify an individual (“De-Identified Information”).  We may disclose such de-identified information publicly and to third parties, or to NORC Partners under agreement with us.

We may disclose your Personal Information for legal reasons. Specifically, we will share Personal Information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of NORC if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

• Fufill any purpose for which you provide it;
• Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request;
• Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues;
• Protect against harm to the rights, property, assets or safety of NORC, our customers or the public,  content found on the Services, or to protect the Services from unauthorized use or misuse, as required or permitted by law;
• For any other purpose disclosed when you provide the information; and,
• When we obtain your consent to do so.

We attempt to notify you about legal demands for your Personal Information when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

Your provision of Personal Data is required in order to use certain parts of our services and our programs.  If you fail to provide such Personal Data, you may not be able to access and use our Services and/or our programs, or parts of our Services and/or our programs.

We may retain your Personal Data for a period of time consistent with the original purpose for collection.  For example, we keep your Personal Data for no longer than reasonably necessary for your use of our programs and Services and for a reasonable period of time afterward. We also may retain your Personal Data during the period of time needed for us to pursue our legitimate business interests, conduct audits, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.

We retain your Personal Data even after your relationship with us ends if reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations (including law enforcement requests), meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse, or fulfill your request to “unsubscribe” from further messages from us.

You may have certain rights relating to your Personal Information, subject to local data protection law. Whenever you use our Services, we aim to provide you with choices about how we use your Personal Data. We also aim to provide you with access to your Personal Data. If that information is wrong, we strive to give you ways to update it quickly or to delete it – unless we have to keep that information for legitimate business or legal purposes. Subject to applicable law, you may obtain a copy of personal information we maintain about you or you may update or correct inaccuracies in that information by contacting us. To help protect your privacy and maintain security, we will take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to the information. In addition, if you believe that personal information we maintain about you is inaccurate, subject to applicable law, you may have the right to request that we correct or amend the information by contacting us as indicated in the How to Contact Us section below.

Exercising Your Rights

If you choose to exercise your rights, you can:

1.     Submit a request via email to privacy@NORC.org or

2.     Send your request to Privacy Compliance Office, 55 East Monroe Street, 20th Floor Chicago, IL 60603

You may also designate an agent to exercise your privacy rights on your behalf. In order to designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, you must provide a valid power of attorney, the requester’s valid government-issued identification, and the authorized agent’s valid government issued identification.

Our Response to Your Request

Upon receiving your request, we will confirm receipt of your request by sending you an email/confirming receipt. To help protect your privacy and maintain security, we may take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to the information. In some instances, such as a request to delete personal information, we may first separately confirm that you would like for us to in fact delete your personal information before acting on your request.

We will respond to your request within thirty (30) days. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.  We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

In some cases our ability to uphold these rights for you may depend upon our obligations to process Personal Information for security, safety, fraud prevention reasons, compliance with regulatory or legal requirements, listed below, or because processing is necessary to deliver the services you have requested. Where this is the case, we will inform you of specific details in response to your request.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:

1.     Complete the transaction for which we collected the Personal Information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you;

2.     Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities;

3.     Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality;

4.     Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law;

5.     Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information's deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research's achievement, if you previously provided informed consent;

6.     Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us;

7.     Comply with a legal obligation; or

8.     Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

Some data protection laws, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), corresponding legislation in Switzerland and in the United Kingdom, and some U.S. state laws, provide you with certain rights in connection with Personal Data you have shared with us. If you are resident in the European Economic Area, you may have the following rights:

• The right to be informed. You are entitled to be informed of the use of your Personal Data.  This Privacy Policy provides such information to you.
• The right of access. You have the right to request a copy of your Personal Data which we hold about you.
• The right of correction: You have the right to request correction or changes of your Personal Data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date. 
• The right to be forgotten: You have the right to request us, at any time, to delete your Personal Data from our servers and to erase your Personal Data when it is no longer necessary for us to retain such data.  Note, however, that deletion of your Personal Data will likely impact your ability to use our services.
• The right to object (opt-out): You have the right to opt-out of certain uses of your Personal Data at any time. 
• The right to data portability: You have the right to a “portable” copy of your Personal Data that you have submitted to us.  Generally, this means your right to request that we move, copy or transmit your Personal Data stored on our servers / IT environment to another service provider’s servers / IT environment.
• The right to refuse to be subjected to automated decision making, including profiling: You have the right not to be subject to a decision and insist on human intervention if the decision is based on automated processing and produces a legal effect or a similarly significant effect on you.
• The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

You may also have the right to make a GDPR complaint to the relevant Supervisory Authority. A list of Supervisory Authorities is available here:  http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/index_en.htm. 

If you need further assistance regarding your rights, please contact us using the contact information provided below and we will consider your request in accordance with applicable law. To make these requests, you may contact us using the contact information below, and we will consider your request in accordance with applicable laws. For your protection, we may need to verify your identity before responding to your request. We may respond to your request by letter, email, telephone or any other suitable method.  If we no longer need to process Personal Data about you in order to provide our Services or our Sites, we will not maintain, acquire or process additional information in order to identify you for the purpose of responding to your request.

In some cases our ability to uphold these rights for you may depend upon our obligations to process personal information for security, safety, fraud prevention reasons, compliance with regulatory or legal requirements, or because processing is necessary to deliver the services you have requested. Where this is the case, we will inform you of specific details in response to your request.

By providing an email address on the NORC Sites or Services, you agree that we may contact you in the event of a change in this Privacy Policy, to provide you with any Service related notices, or to provide you with information about our events, invitations, or related educational information.

For purposes of this Privacy Policy, “opt-in” is generally defined as any affirmative action by a User to submit or receive information, as the case may be.

We currently provide the following opt-out opportunities:

1. At any time, you can contact us through privacy@NORC.org or the address or telephone number provided below to unsubscribe from the service and opt-out of our right per your consent under the terms of this Privacy Policy to share your Personal Data.

2. At any time, you can reply “STOP” to the message in order to opt-out of receiving SMS texts.

Notwithstanding anything else in this Privacy Policy, please note that we always reserve the right to contact you in the event of a change in this Privacy Policy, or to provide you with any service related notices.

3. To request to stop receiving text from NORC outside of replying “STOP” please fill out the form in the link below: 

https://forms.office.com/r/HfukraJhk3

This data will only be used for the purpose of removing your phone number from texting from our projects and their texting systems.

4. To consent to receive texts from NORC for our projects please fill out the form in the link below:

https://forms.office.com/r/t6YN3Bwea4

By providing this number, you allow NORC to text you using an automated text system. Standard messaging and data rates may apply. We will only use your phone number for NORC studies and will not share, sell or otherwise use this number unless you give us permission to do. You can reply STOP to our text messages to opt out at any time.

The Sites may contain links to webpages operated by parties other than NORC. We do not control such websites and are not responsible for their contents or the privacy policies or other practices of such websites. Our inclusion of links to such websites does not imply any endorsement of the material on such websites or any association with their operators. Further, it is up to the User to take precautions to ensure that whatever links the User selects or software the User downloads (whether from this Site or other websites) is free of such items as viruses, worms, trojan horses, defects and other items of a destructive nature. These websites and services may have their own privacy policies, which the User will be subject to upon linking to the third party's website. NORC strongly recommends that each User review the third party's terms and policies.

We are committed to complying with applicable laws, regulations and mandatory government standards regarding the protection of Personal Data.

Personal Data and any additional information submitted may be used globally in connection with employment, business processes within NORC, or communicating with our NORC Partners. Therefore, Personal Data may be transferred to such entities worldwide, where it will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy and laws that are applicable in each country. Countries where we process data may have laws which are different, and potentially not as protective, as the laws of your own country.

If we transfer your Personal Data out of your jurisdiction, we will implement suitable safeguards and rely on legally-provided mechanisms to lawfully transfer data across borders to ensure that your Personal Data is protected.

NORC maintains administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect the User's Personal Data and information against accidental, unlawful or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure or use. We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk, taking into account technological reality, cost, the scope, context and purposes of processing weighted against the severity and likelihood that the processing could threaten individual rights and freedoms. For example, we restrict access to personal information to NORC employees, contractors, business partners and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop or improve our services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations. We use commercially reasonable security measures such as encryption, firewalls, and Secure Socket Layer software (SSL) or hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) to protect Personal Data.

If NORC collects account information for payment or credit, NORC will use the information only to complete the task for which the account information was offered.

The Site is not intended for use by children.  We do not intentionally gather Personal Data about visitors who are under the age of 16.  If a child has provided us with Personal Data, a parent or guardian of that child may contact us to have the information deleted from our records. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 16 in the applicable jurisdiction, please contact us at privacy@NORC.org.  If we learn that we have inadvertently collected the personal information of a child under 16, or equivalent minimum age depending on jurisdiction, we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible. 

The NORC website does respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals.

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time. We will not reduce your rights under this Privacy Policy without your explicit consent. We will post any privacy policy changes on this page and, if the changes are significant, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services or programs, email notification or privacy policy changes). We will also keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.