Late April, the final version of the new “ICC/ESOMAR Code" was accepted by the German ADM and the BVM, upon the condition that a set of additional mandatory professional principles and rules must be met when market research is conducted in Germany by local or foreign market research agencies.
According to the German May newsletter of the EFAMRO these are as follows:
1/ The Esomar rule of anonymisation cannot be waived by the respondent.
2/ Because of the mandatory anonymisation, such consent may not actively be sought.
3/ A contact address of the client may only be given to the respondent following an explicit request to do so.It is crucial for the permissibility of this procedure that the respondent expresses the request of his or her own accord, and that this request is unprompted.
4/ The transmission of the collected data in a non-anonymised form is solely permissible between research institutes and is exclusively designated for utilisation as “scientific research”, as formulated in article 5 of the German Constitution. It shall be defined in advance by contractual means, and respondents must provide their informed consent.
5/ Scientific studies in market research shall be differentiated from other activities and may not be combined with non-scientific research activities.
The full text of the declaration concerning the new code (in PDF) can be downloaded here.
