Privacy Policies

Bay View Analytics seeks to maximize user privacy in all our activities. In practice, this means:

We do not sell or share any personally identifiable information with any other entity.
We collect and save the least amount of information required for the task at hand.
We remove all personally identifiable information when it is no longer required.
We move all data offline and store it in encrypted format as soon as possible.
We do not include any personally identifiable information in any reports, communications, or presentations.

Survey Responses

The privacy of all survey respondents is critical. No personally identifiable information such as name, title, or institutional affiliation is included in any results.

General personal information (such as name, telephone number, email address, IP address) that have no role in the analysis is removed from all survey responses prior to analysis. Some personal information (e.g., the number of years in the position, etc.) may be included in the analysis if it is required to address a specific analysis question. Only the researchers working on the particular survey project have access to the survey responses - they are never shared with other researchers, sponsors, or any other organizations. Only aggregated results, with no personally identifiable information, is included in reports. Only aggregated results, with no personally identifiable information, is shared with clients, sponsors, other organizations.

Open-ended survey responses may be quoted if and only if the respondent has explicitly granted permission. All such responses are then reviewed and edited to ensure that no personally identifiable information is included.

When data collection for a particular survey is complete, the raw survey data is moved off line and stored in an encrypted format.

Contact Information

We maintain two different sets of contact information – one for conducting surveys and one for a mailing list for announcements.

Survey Related Database

Information used for conducting the research process is carefully segregated from all other contact information. Partner organizations, sponsors, and other funding organizations do not have access to this database. Opt-out requests are always honored. The database is limited to communications directly related to the survey and report process:

Survey invitations. Each survey is directed to a specific audience (e.g., the chief academic officer of the institution, a teaching faculty member, etc.). Only those appropriate for a particular survey will receive a survey invitation. All survey invitations include a single-click option to opt-out of all future mailings.
Survey follow-up. Depending on the specifics of the particular survey, respondents may receive an email message confirming that their response has been recorded. Most survey projects include a promise to the respondents that they will get a copy of the resulting report when it is released and will receive an email message providing the direct download links. Contact information for the respondent might be used for follow-up questions for a survey if and only if the respondent has expressly granted permission for this as part of their survey submission.

All contact information not actively being used for a mailing is stored off line in an encrypted format.

Announcement List

The Bay View Analytics announcement mailing list database does not include names, addresses, titles, or organizational affiliation. The only data element we store is an email address. We do not share lists with partner organizations, sponsors, and other funding organizations, and mailings to the list never include any advertising.

We send occasional mailings (no more than once per month) to members of our mailing list with updates on recently published survey reports and news about upcoming projects. All announcement mailings include a single-click option to opt-out of all future mailings.

Bay View Analytics publishes all of our reports under a Creative Commons license, so they are free to download and share. There is no need to provide contact information to obtain our reports. However, some events, such as webinars, do require registration. Registered participants are not automatically added to our mailing list but can optionally join if they wish.

Website

Bay View Analytics collects the least amount of information required to provide a good user experience for our web site. This information includes your IP address (so we can deliver the page to you), the browser you are using (so the page can be correctly formatted), and information about the screen size you are using (to properly scale and format the web page). This allows us to build a site that adjusts to whatever device and browser you are using. We do not share any of this information with any third-party. The website does not use any cookies (see our full cookie policy here) or other user tracking mechanisms (for example, we use the "noreferrer" tag on all external links, so no information is passed to the external site).

The Bay View Analytics website does records logs of user activity to allow us to track how our site is being used and the number of downloads of our reports. These logs include the IP address that was used to access the website, but no other personal user information. Bay View Analytics web logs are not shared with any other organization.