Tailoring: what's in a name?

Tailoring: what’s in a name? tailor-made clothing, custom fit in size and style to a particular person. The second corresponds Health Education Research has taken a lead in more nearly to the process of target marketing, publishing findings from the recent wave of studies appealing to a defined population subgroup that is reporting the effects of tailored health education expected to like a particular size or style of interventions. However, in this journal and elseclothing. This latter approach may be more approwhere, there has been considerable variation in priately labeled as ‘targeted’ rather than tailored. what is meant by the descriptor ‘tailored’. As a Targeting involves development of a single intergrowing number of health education researchers vention approach for a defined population subgroup and practitioners have added the language of that takes into account characteristics shared by tailoring to their vocabulary and the possibility of the subgroup’s members. These subgroups may be tailoring to their repertoire of intervention methods, very small and quite specifically defined, such as it is increasingly important that the field provide a African-American women aged 50–65 belonging clear definition for tailoring and seek to standardize to a particular neighborhood health center. Targetrelated terminology. ing is based upon the advertising principle of We would like to suggest that tailoring be defined market segmentation, which aims to find the right as follows: kinds of consumers for a particular product or service (Peppers and Rogers, 1993). Several Any combination of information or change recently published studies contain similar examples strategies intended to reach one specific person, of group-targeted interventions which have neverbased on characteristics that are unique to that theless been described as tailored (Davis et al., person, related to the outcome of interest, and 1992; Rimer and Orleans, 1994; Rimer et al., 1994; have been derived from an individual assessDrossaert et al., 1996; Morgan et al., 1996). For ment. (Kreuter et al., 1999a,b) example, Eakin and colleagues described tailoring as ‘a process of producing a video whose content This definition highlights the two features of a and characters are adapted for or designed to tailored health promotion intervention that distinappeal to a particular target population’ [(Eakin guish it from other commonly used approaches: et al., 1998), p. 520] and Pasick described tailoring (1) its collection of messages or strategies is as ‘the adaptation of interventions to best fit the intended for a particular person rather than a group relevant needs and characteristics of a specified of people and (2) these messages or strategies are target population’ (Pasick, 1997). based on individual-level factors that are related In contrast to targeting, tailoring—as we have to the health or behavioral outcome of interest. defined it—refers to a process of creating indiviOur rationale is as follows. dualized intervention materials or strategies. This The word tailor comes from the Latin word approach has also been referred to as ‘individual talea meaning ‘to cut’. Its common usage today is tailoring’ or ‘computer tailoring’. The published to make or adapt to fit a particular purpose—as in literature contains a number of intervention studies tailor-made clothing. Although we have found no using this tailoring approach (Prochaska et al., uses of the term tailoring in the published literature 1993; Campbell et al., 1994, 1999; Skinner et al., which betray this general meaning, there are clearly 1994; Strecher et al., 1994; Curry et al., 1995; different interpretations and operational definiKreuter and Strecher, 1995, 1996; Brug et al. 1996, tions of the concept. Appropriately, most authors 1998; Bull and Jamrozik, 1998; Dijkstra et al., describe tailoring as a process of specially creating 1998a–c; Marcus et al., 1998; Rakowski et al., intervention materials or activities. The details 1998; Bull et al., 1999; Kreuter et al., 1999b; of that process typically fall into one of two categories. The first corresponds more closely to Lipkus et al., 1999; Rimer et al., 1999) In these