Postgraduate student surveys privacy notice

This privacy notice explains how UWE Bristol collects, manages and uses your personal data for the purpose of conducting postgraduate surveys. ‘Personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (the data subject).

This privacy notice adheres to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) principle of transparency. This means it gives information about:

• how and why your data will be used
• what your rights are under GDPR
• how to contact UWE Bristol in relation to questions, concerns or exercising your rights regarding the use of your personal data.

Your personal data is being processed to conduct postgraduate student experience surveys; the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) and Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES). UWE Bristol will process this data to make year-on-year comparisons and to help improve the student experience.

As a data controller we are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 (or any successor legislation) and any other legislation directly relating to privacy laws that apply (together “the Data Protection Legislation”). General information on Data Protection law is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We will only process your personal data when the law allows us to. In addition, we will always comply with UWE Bristol’s policies and procedures in processing your personal data. Your participation in this questionnaire is voluntary under the legal bases of consent and performance of a public task. You can withdraw your consent prior to the closing date of the survey without your responses being included in the dataset. You can withdraw your consent by contacting studentpartnership@uwe.ac.uk.

Find out more about lawful bases

Your information will not be used for automated decision-making or profiling and will not be transferred to another country that is either outside the UK or European Economic Area or not deemed as providing adequate data protection by the European Commission.

Personal data that we process includes:

• first name
• second name
• email address
• student ID
• age
• sex
• gender
• ethnicity
• disability
• questionnaire responses.

All responses collected through our student experience surveys are stored by Jisc (a data processor), on behalf of UWE Bristol. Jisc will share the survey responses with Advance HE (a data processor). Advance HE will use the data collected from the survey to support your institution and produce national reports. Data will be securely stored by Advance HE for as long as it is retained on behalf of your institution. You will not be identified in any report produced by Advance HE. Where these organisations use any subprocessors to process your data, appropriate contractual obligations are in place to ensure your data is secure.

All participating institutions have agreed not to identify any individuals when reporting their results both internally and externally, and to use their best efforts to ensure that no individuals can be identified by implication. The full data set will be available to Advance HE in order to conduct national-level research and analysis.

We take a robust approach to protecting your information with secure electronic and physical storage areas for data with controlled access. Access to your personal data is strictly controlled on a need-to-know basis and data is stored and transmitted securely using methods such as encryption and access controls for physical records where appropriate.

Alongside these technical measures, there are comprehensive and effective policies and processes in place to ensure that those who process your personal information are aware of their obligations and responsibilities for the data they have access to.

By default, people are only granted access to the information they require to perform their duties. Mandatory data protection and information security training is provided to staff and expert advice is available if needed.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as we need it to carry out the purposes in this notice.

Please see our University Records Management Policy and Records Retention Schedules for more detailed information. These are available by contacting the Data Protection Office at dataprotection@uwe.ac.uk.

Under the Data Protection legislation, you have the following qualified rights:

• The right to access your personal data held by or on behalf of the University
• The right to rectification if the information is inaccurate or incomplete
• The right to restrict processing and/or erasure of your personal data
• The right to data portability
• The right to object to processing
• The right to object to automated decision-making and profiling
• The right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, we will verify your identity before giving effect to your rights. To exercise any of your rights please contact the Data Protection Office at dataprotection@uwe.ac.uk.

We will always respond to concerns or queries you may have. If you wish to exercise your rights or have any other general data protection queries, please contact the Data Protection Office at dataprotection@uwe.ac.uk.

For further information related to the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, please contact the Student Voice and Academic Policy Team at studentpartnership@uwe.ac.uk.