Do you know what happens with your personal information after collected?

The World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) is celebrated annually on May 17^th. To the industry of market research where people’s opinion and information are collected, stored analysed and reported for decision making, the WTISD underscores the importance of ensuring strict data privacy standards to protect survey participants.

Data Privacy Awareness and Understanding

According to the global survey conducted for WIN Market Research partners in December 2022, 59% of polled Vietnamese declared to have been aware of what happened with their personal information after they shared it with data collectors. This figure is the outcome of a steady upward trend, representing a total increase of 33% points over the four-year period (from 2019 to 2022), which might be thanks to the increased transparency from data collectors and the overall more knowledgeable population.

In general, the awareness and understanding about privacy among Vietnamese people is higher than the in APAC region (35 %), the world average (35% ) and most of APAC countries. Interestingly, APAC countries/territories, with the lowest level of self-declared awareness and understanding about data usage and privacy, are the world largest economies, such as Hong Kong (China), South Korea and Japan . Despite such a high rank among the surveyed countries, about 4 out of 10 Vietnamese remain ignorant about how, why, and where their data is stored, processed, and potentially shared, which emphasizes the need for improved communication and responsibility from data collectors.

Vietnam’s data protection regulations and ESOMAR standards

As a market research agency, Indochina Research Vietnam (IRL) is committed to ensure the privacy and data security of our research respondents/participants, and take actions to protect the collected data with strict compliance to Vietnam’s data protection regulations and ESOMAR (European Society for Market Research) standards. See more about how we protect privacy and data protection as below:

1. Research objectives and data usage are made clear to data subjects (“respondents/participants”) prior to data collection and their consent to participate obtained.
2. Personal data are not disclosed to any third party unless the data subject has given consent to do so.
3. A privacy notice is readily accessible by data subjects and is easily understood.
4. Personal data cannot be traced, nor inferred via deductive disclosure to the survey responses
5. Personal data is held securely. It is protected against risks such as loss, unauthorised access, destruction, misuse, manipulation, or disclosure.
6. Personal data is to be held no longer than is necessary for the purpose of which it was collected or used.

Clear data protection and privacy communication enable market researchers to build trust with clients, respondents, and stakeholders, ensure regulatory compliance; mitigate risk of data breaches and the subsequent reputational damage; ensure transparency to respondents/participants and increase the quality of data collected.

For any questions, feel free to contact us, or read our publications at https://indochina-research.com/news/

For further reference, please read:

• 2022 WIN World Survey (WWS) on Technology topic (link)
• Vietnam regulation : Degree No. 13/2023/ND-CP on Protection of Personal Data by the Government of Vietnam (link)
• ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market, Opinion and Social Research and Data Analytics (link)

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