The theoretical of sampling survey has developed, such as two-phase sampling, Multistage sampling and so on. However, when the proportion of individuals with certain characteristics in the population is very low, using traditional sampling methods will produce large deviations, and studies of sampling on rare items in domestic are very rare. Inverse sampling is a sampling method used to investigate rare items. It is suitable for the situation where feature units are very rare in the population. In this paper, inverse sampling is chosen as the research object, and the relative research results both at home and abroad are summarized theoretically. Finally, questions of available research result are concluded and some follow-up research directions are provided.