Let the Insights Association support your ISO certification goals!

The Insights Association believes that certification to ISO 20252 Market, Opinion and Social Research including Insights and Data analytics provide tangible benefits to marketing research and analytics companies, to the clients of research companies, and to the public. 

Through its wholly owned subsidiary, the Certification Institute for Research Quality (CIRQ), the association is proud to offer tools to help your company through its implementation of the global market research standard.

CIRQ’s ISO 20252:2019 program is accredited by the ANSI National Accreditation Board to ISO 17065:2012, the ISO standard for certification bodies that provide auditing and certification services.

 

Creating Research Process Management System Quality Manual?  We’ve done it for you!

One of the biggest hurdles to starting an ISO 20252 implementation can be understanding how all established requirements align to your company's individual processes and procedures, management, personnel and business services. The CIRQ/Insights Assocation ISO 20252 Quality Manual template provides all you need to customize the document and achieve one of the most critical requirements: establishing a system that provides consistent and reproduceable results!

The template clearly highlights step-by-step guidance on how to implement the standard with "pro" tips from the CIRQ auditor team, how to draft processes and procedures by providing embedded templates, all written in language that maps directly to the standard and ensures a high likelihood of a successful external review. The template is delivered as a Word document, with no extraneous graphics to edit. It is intended to be individualized!

The CIRQ/Insights Association ISO 20252 Quality Manual template will help demystify the ISO implementation process and help companies achieve the required components of a documented research quality management system. 

Quality & Compliance Development for your team!
 

The CIRQ/Insights Association Internal Auditing Training Program has been created to assist companies fulfill the requirement for internal compliance personnel, a key component to ISO 20252 conformity.  

The fully revised program consists of modules and short assessments to test the user’s knowledge. The content has been updated to reflect the requirements of both ISO 20252 and ISO 27001, another highly sought-after certification within the market research and data analytics industry. The on-demand training provides a deep review of auditor theories and competencies, and includes a Risk Rating Matrix and Internal Audit Report template. Both are fully downloadable and can be customized to your company’s compliance needs. 

Developing personnel to take on the internal auditor role at your company has a two-fold effect: deviations from the standard's requirements can be identified and remediated before a formal external review, and the internal auditors themselves have a deeper understanding and expertise with the standard leading to increased role responsibility as a quality and compliance manager.

Upon successful completion of the training, users are issued certificates that show their grasp of audit techniques. Once an employee is certified they can conduct internal audits within a company - another key requirement of compliance and certification to ISO 20252!

Contact Juliana Wood, CIRQ's Managing Director, for questions, program support and invoicing options for Insights Association members and non-members.
 

Role of the Insights Association and ISO quality standards

Before merging with MRA to form the Insights Association, CASRO served as the official U.S. delegate in the development of ISO 20252 and ISO 26362.

In 2019, ISO 20252 was revised to include the requirements from ISO 26362 (Market research in access panels) and ISO 19731 (Data analytics). This revision allowed for a removal of duplication between the two research standards, and updated clauses that align with the GDPR and newer technologies like web analytics not present in the older versions of the standards.

CIRQ (the Certification Institute for Research Quality) was formed to provide auditing and certification services globally to market research firms in order to assess their compliance with the applicable components of ISO 20252 and make a determination regarding certification. It remains the only established certification body in the U.S. to provide these services.