Summary form only given. This paper presents a Variable Step Size (VSS) technique that is integrated with a Stop-And-Go (SAG) approach for blind adaptive equalization of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) signals. The proposed technique is applied to the Constant-Modulus Algorithm (CMA) and the Multi-Modulus Algorithm (MMA). The SAG approach allows the VSS technique to either vary the step size or to hold the previous one depending on a specific error criterion. This leads to the reduction of the amount of computations involved Simulation results show that algorithms with the VSS technique result in less steady-state Mean-Squared Errors (MSEs) than those obtained for algorithms without the VSS technique for the same speed of convergence.