Qual Research Terms and Conditions

The AQR has drafted these guidelines to help you prepare Terms and Conditions for your business.

This work started with an enquiry from a researcher who had left employment to work freelance and who wanted to know if we had a recommended contract/terms and conditions. At that point the AQR had no information available. This prompted a process of development, which involved examining the Terms and Conditions of different companies, consulting the Institute of Directors, emailing the AQR membership to understand any legal or contractual problems encountered in the industry, preparing a draft and finally having our draft checked by a lawyer.

It was reassuring that we were not inundated with stories of legal battles from our membership. The key problems facing qualitative researcher tended to be:

• Late payment, a universal problem, which unfortunately Terms and Conditions cannot address.

• Whose Terms and Conditions apply, yours or your clients? We found some experience of only seeing client Terms and Conditions when a problem arose. The AQR recommends that you always obtain confirmation of a project in writing from your client, and written agreement to accept your terms and conditions. We have drafted a form to make this easy.

• Issues around data protection

• Problems dealing with third parties and/or companies abroad

These guidelines and templates are available for reference and will be updated as necessary.