Tailoring

Tailoring is a term that is used in different ways in social behavioral research. It often is used to describe health behavior and health education messages that have been crafted to appeal to and influence the individual, with the intent of modifying the individual's attitudes and behavior such that he or she engages in healthier endeavors. A message that is tailored is a personalized message that attempts to speak to the individual as an individual and not as a member of any group or stratum. Additionally, a tailored message attempts to create a customized, personally meaningful communication—based on knowledge (data and information) about individuals. A more formal definition comes from M. W. Kreuter and C. S. Skinner and indicates that a tailored message is any combination of information or change strategies intended to reach one specifie person, based on characteristics that are unique to that person, related to the outcome of interest, and have been derived from an individual assessment. This definition highlights the two features of a tailored health promotion intervention that distinguish it from other commonly used approaches: (a) Its collection of messages or strategies is intended for a particular person rather than a group of people, and (b) these messages or strategies are based on individual-level factors that are related to the behavioral outcome of interest. Tailoring techniques are utilized also by marketing practitioners but with the marketing goal of selling consumer goods and services.

Tailored messages can be based on age, sex, educational attainment, and other sociodemographics, as well as cognitive, motivational, and behavioral attributes. These messages usually refer to interventions created specifically for individuals with characteristics unique to them, and they are usually based on data collected from them as well.