Process / pipelineSampling

Weighted Snowball Sampling — Weight-Adjusted Chain-Referral Sampling

Weighted snowball sampling is a chain-referral technique in which participants recruit peers from a hidden or hard-to-reach population, and differential inclusion probabilities are estimated and corrected through statistical weights. Unlike basic snowball sampling, the weighting step allows approximately unbiased population estimates, bridging the gap between convenience-driven recruitment and probability-based inference.

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Sources

  1. Heckathorn, D. D. (1997). Respondent-driven sampling: A new approach to the study of hidden populations. Social Problems, 44(2), 174–199. DOI: 10.2307/3096941
  2. Salganik, M. J., & Heckathorn, D. D. (2004). Sampling and estimation in hidden populations using respondent-driven sampling. Sociological Methodology, 34(1), 193–240. DOI: 10.1111/j.0081-1750.2004.00152.x

Related methods

ScholarGateWeighted Snowball Sampling (Weighted Snowball Sampling). Retrieved 2026-06-04 from https://scholargate.app/en/survey-methodology/weighted-snowball-sampling