Understanding tailoring in communicating about health

TLDR

Tailoring refers to individualized communication methods aimed at enhancing message processing and behavioral outcomes through personalization, feedback, and content matching, organized within a 2 × 3 matrix of goals and tactics. The paper seeks to clarify tailoring to guide future research and demonstrate how the framework can systematically generate research questions and appropriate study designs. The authors illustrate applying the framework to systematically formulate research questions and select suitable study designs for tailoring research. Existing studies show generally positive but inconsistent results, underscoring the need for clearer tailoring guidance.

Abstract

'Tailoring' refers to any of a number of methods for creating communications individualized for their receivers, with the expectation that this individualization will lead to larger intended effects of these communications. Results so far have been generally positive but not consistently so, and this paper seeks to explicate tailoring to help focus future research. Tailoring involves either or both of two classes of goals (enhancing cognitive preconditions for message processing and enhancing message impact through modifying behavioral determinants of goal outcomes) and employs strategies of personalization, feedback and content matching. These goals and strategies intersect in a 2 × 3 matrix in which some strategies and their component tactics match better to some goals than to others. The paper illustrates how this framework can be systematically applied in generating research questions and identifying appropriate study designs for tailoring research.