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Hi all,

Does anyone know of uses of the term "snowball sampling" before
Coleman's 1958 paper? Because it is a natural analogy for the process of
collecting data via exploiting relational information collected from
respondents, I expect is has been in informal use for a long time.
Coleman (1958) who defines it as:

"Snowball sampling: One method of interviewing a man's immediate social
environment is to use the sociometric questions in the interview for
sampling purposes."

Are there earlier references in print?

Cheers,

Mark

James S. Coleman, "Relational Analysis: The Study of Social
Organizations with Survey Methods", Human Organization, 28--36, 1958

----------------------------------------------------
Mark S. Handcock
Professor of Statistics
Department of Statistics
University of California Phone: (310) 817-6778
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554. FAX: (206) 457-1953
Web: www.stat.ucla.edu/~handcock
internet: [log in to unmask]

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