Guidelines on processing personal data for studies - key concepts
On this page, you will find key concepts related to the processing of personal data in studies. This page is a subpage of the 'How you, as a student, are to process personal data in your studies' page. /en/services/how-you-as-a-student-are-to-process-personal-data-in-your-studies
Key concepts regarding personal data
| Personal data | includes all information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person, such as name, email address, photograph, a research survey or interview response that can be linked to a particular person, a video or audio recording of a person, an IP address, information on a person’s location, or other information which can be correlated to identify the person (e.g. address and job title). |
| Special categories of personal data |
Information belonging to special categories of personal data (often referred to as sensitive personal data) is information that reveals a person’s:
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| Processing of personal data | The processing of personal data means all kinds of automatic or manual actions performed on personal data, or ‘any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction’ (General Data Protection Regulation, Article 4). |
| Data subject | The data subject is a person (for example, a participant in survey or interview research) whose personal data is processed. |
| Controller | The controller is the party that determines the purposes and the means of the personal data processing. The controller is responsible for ensuring that the personal data processing (for example, protecting and storing the data and informing the data subjects) is done properly and in conformance with law. |