Skip to contentScholarGate
LibraryBookshelfDeskReview StudioAssistant
Sign in
Adaptive Snowball Sampling/Evidence
Method evidence record

Adaptive Snowball Sampling

Adaptive snowball sampling is a hybrid sampling strategy that recruits initial participants (seeds) from a target population and then dynamically adjusts referral chains based on pre-specified criteria — such as population density, diversity, or theoretical saturation. Combining the chain-referral logic of snowball sampling with the responsive decision rules of adaptive sampling, it is particularly suited to studying rare, hidden, or hard-to-reach populations where conventional frames are unavailable.

Sources recorded, not reviewed

Source record

Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.

Adaptive Snowball Sampling
Taxonomic method record · process-pipeline / survey-methodology
  • Thompson, S. K. (1990). Adaptive cluster sampling. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 85(412), 1050–1059. · DOI 10.1080/01621459.1990.10474975
  • Goodman, L. A. (1961). Snowball sampling. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 32(1), 148–170. · DOI 10.1214/aoms/1177705148
Open full method

Curated claims

Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.

No curated claims yet

This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.

Related methods

Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.

Taxonomic bucketAdaptive Cluster Samplingmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Taxonomic bucketPurposive samplingmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyRespondent-Driven Samplingmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Taxonomic bucketSnowball Samplingmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.

Evidence status

Sources recorded, not reviewed

Bibliographic sources are present. Claim-level evidence review has not been performed.

Sources

2 recorded citations, copied from the method source record.

Actions

Open method page
ScholarGate

A content-first reference library for research methods — what each one is, how it works, and where it comes from.

Open data (CC-BY)

Explore

  • Library
  • Search the library…
  • Browse by field
  • Fields
  • Journey
  • Compare
  • Which method?

Reference

  • Subjects
  • Atlas
  • Glossary
  • Methodology
  • Philosophy

Your tools

  • Bookshelf
  • Desk
  • Chat

Company

  • About
  • Pricing
  • Contact
  • Suggest a method

Entries are compiled from published sources for reference. Verifying the accuracy and suitability of any information for your own use remains your responsibility.

© 2026 ScholarGate · A research-method reference library
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Terms
  • Delete account