Self-development inquiry (SDi) scale: a process-oriented measure of psychological integration in an organismic-transpersonal framework.

Introduction: Psychological integration has been theorized across humanistic, neuroscientific, phenomenological, and complexity-based traditions as a multi-level process of experiential coordination, yet empirical operationalizations of integration as a structured organizational architecture remain limited. The present study introduces and validates the Self-Development Inquiry (SDi), a multidimensional instrument grounded in an organismic-transpersonal framework that models psychological functioning across structural resources (Q2), integration processes (Q1), and dysregulation-related signals (Q3). Methods: A community sample ( Results: EFA and CFA supported a differentiated first-order structure with good approximate fit (CFI = 0.943, TLI = 0.933, RMSEA = 0.065, SRMR = 0.053), satisfactory composite reliability, and preserved discriminant validity. SEM identified a partially mediated hierarchical structure consistent with the theoretical architecture: physical-cognitive organization was strongly associated with external coherence (β = 0.82), which was in turn the dominant proximal correlate of both physical (β = -0.65) and mental disharmonies (β = -0.68). Bootstrapped mediation indicated robust indirect effects from structural resources to dysregulation via integration pathways, strongest through enacted congruence, while energetic organization retained additional direct regulatory effects. The model explained substantial variance in dysregulation outcomes ( Discussion: Collectively, findings are consistent with conceptualizing psychological integration as a hierarchically organized system in which embodied structural capacities are associated with integrative coherence, which is in turn associated with reduced dysregulation. Because the design is cross-sectional, these associations do not permit inference about temporal direction. The convergent evidence supports the SDi as a theoretically coherent operationalization of integration that is empirically distinguishable from generalized affective distress while remaining substantively related to established wellbeing and emotion-regulation benchmarks. By integrating latent structural modeling with network psychometrics and convergent validity analysis, the SDi advances the empirical investigation of integration as a measurable organizational construct rather than a unidimensional wellbeing indicator.