In this dissertation, several data-selective adaptive signal processing algorithms are derived and investigated for solving two different problems. The first one involves scenarios handling sparse systems, where we introduce a framework in which a general penalty function is incorporated into the cost function for exploiting the sparsity of the model. Under this scope, we propose three algorithms with an adjustable penalty function, the first one based on the l1 - norm, which we term zero-attracting SM-NLMS with adjustable penalty function (ZA-SM-NLMS-ADP). The second algorithm is based on the log-sum penalty function and the third one on the l0 - norm, named reweighted ZASM- NLMS (RZA-SM-NLMS-ADP) and the exponential ZA-SM-NLMS (EZASM- NLMS-ADP), respectively. We also carry out a statistical analysis of the sparsity-aware SM-NLMS algorithms with a general penalty function, arriving at mathematical expressions for the mean-square error at steady state. The second problem addressed considers nonlinear adaptive algorithms based on kernel functions. In this context, we develop two data selective algorithms, the Set-Membership Normalized Kernel Least Mean Squares (SM-NKLMS) algorithm and the Set-Membership Kernel Affine Projection (SM-KAP) algorithm, which have the capability of naturally limiting the growing structure created by the kernels, dealing with one of the major problems presented when working with kernel algorithms. The kernel algorithms developed have been tested for a time series prediction task. A statistical analysis of the proposed SM-NKLMS algorithm is also developed. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms, outperform standard linear and nonlinear adaptive algorithms in both convergence rate and steady state performance.