Noba Scholar is a project of the Diener Education Fund. Noba Scholar is intended to provide high quality academic publications of the type typically found in handbooks and encyclopedias, but largely free of the cost and copyright restrictions that all too often act as a barrier to their use and distribution. The materials are subject to editorial review.

The Diener Education Fund (DEF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded with the mission of re-imagining higher education to better serve the changing needs of students and professors. The focus of the DEF is on making scholarly information widely available to people of all backgrounds. This mission is embodied in the Noba Project (which focuses on disseminating textbooks and other instructional materials) and Noba Scholar (which focuses on disseminating research and theory).

These materials are licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. Users may reuse and redistribute the content to suit their needs, so long as they provide attribution and a link to the original source.

The Diener Education Fund was co-founded by Drs. Ed and Carol Diener. Ed was a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and a professor at University of Virginia and the University of Utah, and a senior scientist at the Gallup Organization but passed away in April 2021. For more information, please see nobaproject.com. Carol Diener is the former director of the Mental Health Worker and the Juvenile Justice Programs at the University of Illinois. Both Ed and Carol are award-winning university teachers.

Acknowledgements

The Diener Education Fund would like to acknowledge the following individuals and companies for their contribution to the Noba Project: Danielle Geerling, Nadezhda Lyubchik, Christopher Wiese.

We would especially like to acknowledge the generous financial contributions of the Frank C. Diener Foundation. Nearly, 100 years ago Frank C. and Mary Alice Diener moved to a remote corner of the San Joaquin Valley (California), where they helped pioneer agricultural practices in what became one of the most fertile farm regions in the world. From the beginning, Frank and Mary Alice were invested in sharing their success with others through the formation of the Frank C. Diener Foundation. Over the years, they contributed to many causes including education, hospitals, museums, organizations addressing homelessness, and religious causes. We are grateful for the support of this foundation and its proud legacy of giving.