Parenting Science Gang (PSG) is a citizen science project funded with a grant from Wellcome.

We have a newsletter for people interested in our project. We manage our citizen science project mostly through Facebook groups and we run events from time to time. When we finish our project we will write a report evaluating the project.

We are not a profit making entity and we never sell or trade lists with companies and businesses for marketing purposes. We simply don’t do that sort of thing.

But just to be clear, we’ve written this Privacy Policy to provide detailed information on when and why we collect your personal information, how we use it, the limited conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure. Read on to find out…


Types of data we collect

Google Analytics

When someone visits our website www.parentingsciencegang.org.uk we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect data.

Google Analytics collects standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. This helps us find out things like how many people are visiting our website, and whether you came here from Facebook or found us in Google Search. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We don’t attempt to find out the identities of any individuals who visit our site, and we don’t ask Google to do that either. We will use some of this data in our evaluation report.


Mailing Lists

When people register for our e-newsletter, we collect personal information.
We keep the following information for everyone on our email list:

  • name
  • email address
  • date subscribed

If you subscribed by communicating directly with one of our team and asking them to add you to the list (rather than via our website or via a link) then we may record your organisation also.

We use this information for a few reasons: to send you the Parenting Science Gang email newsletter; to contact you if we need to obtain or provide additional information and to check our records are right.

We use a third-party provider, MailChimp, to deliver our newsletter. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter.

For more information, please see MailChimp’s privacy notice. You can unsubscribe to general mailings at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails or by emailing Rebecca Brueton at parentingsciencegang@gmail.com .

We may use some of the Mailchimp data in anonymised form, in our Parenting Science Gang evaluation report at the end of the project (e.g. how many people read the newsletter, how many subscribed, how many different institutions following us).

We don’t ever rent or share email lists with other organisations and businesses.

If you would like to unsubscribe from our mailing list, please use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of one of our email newsletters, or email Rebecca Brueton at parentingsciencegang@gmail.com


Events

Parenting Science Gang sometimes runs events for our members and other guests. We collect data from participants necessary for the event e.g.

  • name
  • phone number
  • allergies
  • access requirements
  • any other special requirements
  • permission to take and publish photos (specific uses of photos are detailed on the sign up form)
  • the same information for accompanying children and other adults
    email address of guest

This information is used by the Parenting Science Gang team members to organise the event. Information will be shared with outside agencies as necessary to run the event. e.g. allergy and access requirements will be shared with the venue if necessary. Details may also be shared with the venue if requested for essential purposes such as fire safety and registration. Relevant details will be shared with nannies if childcare is provided at the event and other adults engaged with the children (e.g. Forest School Teachers) to help them provide a safe and happy environment for the children.

We delete personal information such as allergies, personal requirements and children’s names shortly after the events.

We keep information on numbers and who attended until the end of our project (February 2019). We may publish anonymised data in our evaluation report.

We keep data on photo permission for as long as necessary (for example, as long as the website is live, we will keep a record of who has given permission for their photo to be used on it).

Information on photo permissions is kept by our Project Director, Sophia Collins. sophia.e.collins@gmail.com


Membership of Parenting Science Gang groups

All posts, comments and other interactions made within our Parenting Science Gang groups may be used when we evaluate the project. We use data analysis tools such as Facebook’s own tool “Insights” and third party tools such as Grytics to gather standard group member data such as number of members joined, the group’s most active time of day and the most popular comments. We also like to make the occasional Word Cloud from a group’s comments.

We will write an evaluation report for Wellcome, the charity who have funded the project. This means that we may reproduce comments from members in a publicly available report. We will change your name to protect your privacy or ask for your permission to use your real name. Comments from the evaluation report may also be quoted in publicity associated with the report and with Parenting Science Gang.

If you do NOT agree to us using your comments in the report, please send a Facebook messages to one of your group admins, or email Rebecca Brueton at parentingsciencegang@gmail.com

As a member of Facebook, your interaction with our groups is also subject to Facebook’s own privacy policy.


Access to your personal information

You are entitled to view, amend, or delete the personal information that we hold. Email your request to Rebecca Brueton at parentingsciencegang@gmail.com


Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. You can see when this policy was last updated by reading the ‘Date of last update’ at the bottom of this page.

All updates come into affect as soon as a revised policy is published. We will give notice by publishing the revised version to the Privacy Policy page on the website and possibly also with other notices on the website and newsletter.

You are encouraged to review this notice to keep up to date with any changes that may affect you as your continued use of the website implies your continued consent to be bound by this Privacy Policy.


Date of last update: 23/05/2018