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***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** 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] _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.