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Health Education Research Advance Access originally published online on March 17, 2008
Health Education Research 2008 23(3):454-466; doi:10.1093/her/cyn004
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Understanding tailoring in communicating about health

Robert P. Hawkins1,{dagger},*, Matthew Kreuter2,{dagger}, Kenneth Resnicow3,{dagger}, Martin Fishbein4 and Arie Dijkstra5

1 Center for Health Systems Research and Analysis, University of Wisconsin, 1513 University Avenue, 3107e Mechanical Engineering Building, Madison, WI 53703
2 Health Communication Research Laboratory, Saint Louis University, 3545 Lafayette Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104, USA
3 School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1420 Washington Heights (SPH II), Room 5009, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029, USA
4 Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
5 Social & Organizational Psychology, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen, The Netherlands

* Correspondence to: R. P. Hawkins. E-mail: rhawkins{at}wisc.edu

‘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 x 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.

{dagger} Order of authorship between the first three authors was randomly determined.

Received on May 10, 2007; accepted on December 27, 2007


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