Voxpopme and MRII Publish State of Insights Report as Insights Leaders Put Proof Ahead of AI

30 September 2026

See how 126 senior insights leaders use AI, protect data quality, and prove impact, and where your expert judgment matters most in the year ahead.

Park City, Utah, September 30, 2026: Voxpopme announced the findings of the State of Insights: Insiders Edition at a live launch webinar. The research was produced in partnership with the Market Research Institute International (MRII). The report draws on 126 research, analytics, and insights practitioners, most of them Director-level or above. The findings deliver on the promise made when the study opened in August to publish results back to the community.

If you lead an insights team, you’re being asked to show what your work changed. Budgets are tighter, and AI tools sit in nearly every workflow. Your research is getting done, and leadership relies on it. What’s often missing is evidence tying your work to the decisions it shaped. Without it, your influence rests on being believed rather than demonstrated.

Much of the industry conversation centers on AI. The practitioners surveyed put proof first.

What the report found

Here’s what your peers told us.

• Proof outranks AI. Proving the business impact of insights is the top priority for the next 12 months. Data quality and the evolving role of the insights team follow.
• AI is everywhere, autonomy isn’t. Only 1% of respondents use AI for none of the research tasks listed. Yet 51% wouldn’t trust AI to run any research task without human review.
• Data quality is the biggest named threat. 28% discarded or re-fielded a study over data quality in the past 12 months. Fraudulent respondents and AI-generated answers make up roughly 60% of top concerns.
• The say-do gap often goes unchecked. 21% saw a stated-intent finding contradicted by actual behavior. Another 33% didn’t know, and 16% use nothing formal to check.
• Influence outpaces measurement. More than half say their work was cited in leadership decisions last quarter, but only 17% measure research ROI consistently.

The report also shows what your peers think is overhyped, so you can benchmark your own team’s priorities.

The findings point to one priority for the year ahead: making the judgment behind your insights work visible, so leadership can see what it changed.

Andy Barraclough, Founder and CEO of Voxpopme, said: “This is a profession thinking about its standing as much as its tooling. Influence exists, but the evidence for it is largely not being measured and communicated. Insights leaders are right to protect the judgment at the heart of their work. But judgment that cannot be seen is difficult to defend, and harder still to fund. That is where we intend to put our effort.”

Ed Keller, Executive Director of MRII, added: “Technology is changing how research gets done, but our ultimate value comes from helping organizations make better decisions. The findings on AI make that point especially well. When a human remains in the loop, trust rises sharply.”

Availability

The full report is available now. You can download it here. If you missed the September 30 launch webinar, you can watch the on-demand session. Distribution partners include MRII, the Insights Association, and TMRE.