Ahmad, M. & Wilkins, S. (2024). Purposive sampling in qualitative research: A framework for the entire journey. Quality & Quantity, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-024-02022-5 1 Purposive Sampling in Qualitative Research: A Framework for the Entire Journey Maiss Ahmad a and Stephen Wilkins b a University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. b The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Abstract Purposive sampling (PS) is one of the most commonly used approaches in qualitative research across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Despite its popularity, there is still no research- based framework for conducting, teaching and evaluating PS applications. In this study, we articulate a framework developed from insights collected from thirteen professors and senior research experts at leading universities and research centers worldwide, across eight distinct social science disciplines in the fields of education, business and health policy. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and then analyzed using the codebook thematic analysis technique. The proposed PS framework embraces the flexibility, inductive and coherence principles of qualitative inquiry. It provides an application guide for novice researchers and postgraduate students, and an appraisal tool for academics, principal investigators and journal reviewers. Additionally, the results highlight the important role of supervisors and principal investigators in the entire research process. Keywords Purposive sampling; Methodology; Social sciences; Teaching, Qualitative research 1 Introduction Sampling is a crucial pillar in determining the rigor of all forms of social science studies; therefore, selecting a proper sample design is the cornerstone of any research strategy (Lohr 2019). As a rule, the design of the sampling strategy is guided by the main design of the research methodology, which is typically one of three designs: qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods (Kaushik and Walsh 2019). There are a diverse range of sampling strategies that can be applied in each methodology design. All of these sampling strategies can be categorized into one of two main sampling schemes: random (probability) sampling and non- random (non-probability) sampling (Onwuegbuzie and Leech 2007; Patton 2015).