Advancing the Science of Human Development
DRI conducts and shares research that helps people better understand human development across the lifespan, empowering educators, organizations, communities, and practitioners to navigate an increasingly complex world.
20+
PUBLISHEd STUDIES25+
YEARS ADVANCINGDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
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COUNTRIES REPRESENTED[#]+
PRACTITIONERS, EDUCATORS & LEADERS REACHED
Why Human Development Matters
Today’s most complex challenges cannot be solved by information alone. They also require a deeper understanding of how people develop—the ways we think, learn, relate to others, collaborate, lead, and respond to complexity.
Developmental research helps explain how these capacities emerge in childhood and continue evolving across the lifespan. DRI advances this science so families, educators, practitioners, organizations, and communities can better support healthy development at every stage of life.
Research That Serves Humanity
The Developmental Research Institute supports individuals, practitioners, educators, and organizations seeking a deeper understanding of human development across the lifespan and its application in practice.
Our purpose is to support the development of humanity through investigating the unfolding of consciousness in individuals and collectives, providing guidance for models of evolution and how they affect all efforts at improving policy and approaches to education, organizational, culture change and spiritual development.
— DRI Purpose Statement
Advancing the Validation Research Behind STAGES
A 2021 conference summary of the research validating the STAGES developmental model, covering convergent validity, inter-rater reliability, longitudinal change, and Rasch analysis across multiple studies.
Four Pillars of Our Mission
DRI works across research, education, publication, and community to make developmental science accessible and useful in the world.
Research
Conducting studies that ground research in application, and application in research
Education
Making developmental science accessible to counselors, educators, and practitioners
Publication
A clearinghouse of references and research documenting human development across the lifespan
Community
Connecting an international community of researchers, practitioners, and educators
From Theory to Evidence
Many frameworks describe how people grow. Few can measure it. DRI’s work rests on turning developmental theory into validated, repeatable measurement.
Decades of Developmental Theory
Building on Loevinger’s ego development research, developmental science describes how meaning-making matures from early childhood through late adulthood.
A Validated Instrument
The STAGES model translates theory into a scoring system with peer-reviewed evidence for inter-rater reliability, convergent validity, and longitudinal growth.
Evidence in Practice
Validated measurement lets educators, counselors, and organizations ground their work in evidence rather than intuition alone.
A Global Community of Practice
Developmental Research Institute serves an international community of researchers, educators, practitioners, and organizational leaders advancing the science of human development across the lifespan. Now headquartered in Montana, DRI continues to foster research, education, and collaboration with partners around the world while expanding partnerships throughout Montana.
Research & Writing
The Validation of a New Scoring Method for Assessing Ego Development Based on Three Dimensions of Language
O’Fallon, Murray et al. · Heliyon (Elsevier), 2020
Sentence Completion Assessments for Ego Development
Tom Murray · Integral Leadership Review
Children’s Development Study: Ego Stages Ages 4–13
O’Fallon et al. · First study of its kind
Support the Development of Humanity
DRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Every study we publish is made freely available to the educators, counselors, and researchers who put it to work. Your gift keeps this research moving.
