IdeaScale has made an effort to be compliant with as many regulatory bodies as it can within the realm of Online Research, Email Marketing and Opinion Polls. Documented here are a list of the laws and regulatory institutions that we are in compliance.
Federalwide Assurance Number
The Federalwide Assurance number is assigned by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP):
Truste - Certified Privacy
Truste is an independent non-profit organization that certify and monitor website privacy and email policies, and resolve thousands of consumer privacy problems every year.
University Institutional Review Boards (IRB)
IRB's generally need to approve each survey and the researcher individually. Surveys from IdeaScale have been approved for research by over 1000 universities, in the United States and worldwide. Below are a list of the few universities that have explicitly endorsed use of IdeaScale for their students:
European Union - Safe Harbor
IdeaScale has applied for the EU Safe Harbor certification and we should be approved shortly.
Section 508 Compliance
Surveys created through IdeaScale are Section 508 (US Federal Accessibility Guidelines) compliant. This DOES NOT apply for themes that are customized by the user.
HIPPA Certification
It is not uncommon for studies related to human subject research to require that all parties involved complete HIPAA compliance training. As a result, IdeaScale has teamed up with Rutgers University to certify all staff with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance training. Everyone at IdeaScale underwent a training program that emphasizes the HIPAA Privacy regulations - the major focus for most public health studies and health care providers.
Respondent Anonymity Assurance
IdeaScale offers a unique guarantee to survey researchers to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the respondents. One of the challenges researchers face is the requirement for two directly conflicting issues: 1) The ability to track who has responded to the survey and ensuring that email identifications not be linked to the response data. To overcome this issue, Respondent Anonymity Assurance has been introduced. IdeaScale asserts that once RAA is enabled on a survey, although computer generated identification numbers for individuals will be generated, the survey researcher will not have access to both the respondent's email address as well as the response data at the same time. |
