Supporting quality of service (QoS) guarantees for diverse multimedia services are the primary concerns for WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) networks. A scheduling scheme that satisfies QoS requirements has become more important for wireless communications. We propose a downlink scheduling scheme called adaptive priority-based downlink scheduling (APDS) for providing QoS guarantees in IEEE 802.16 networks. APDS comprises two major components: priority assignment and resource allocation. Different service-type connections primarily depend on their QoS requirements to adjust priority assignments and dispatch bandwidth resources dynamically. We consider both starvation avoidance and resource management. Simulation results show that our APDS methodology outperforms the representative scheduling approaches in QoS satisfaction and maintains fairness in starvation prevention.