Lessons Learned From Developing a Tailored Print Intervention: A Guide for Practitioners and Researchers New to Tailoring

¹ doctoral candidate and research associate at the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas.
² cancer prevention fellow in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
³ owner of 3AM Communications, has been producing, studying, and teaching about tailored health communication since 1987 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
⁴ professor of medical science in the Department of Community Health at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
⁵ assistant professor of behavioral sciences & health promotion and director of Diversity Programs at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas.
⁶ licensed psychologist and assistant professor of psychology in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Houston in Victoria, Texas.
⁷ professor and chair of the Division of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

Although some "how-to" guides have been written on tailored messaging, we found no reports on lessons learned from the process of developing a tailored intervention. Such lessons may be useful for practitioners and researchers who are new to tailored intervention development. The authors describe lessons gleaned from the process of developing a repeat mammography tailored print intervention. Lessons learned include the following: Selection of determinants appropriate for tailoring should be based on a theoretic framework and refined through assessment of the target population; researchers should anticipate threats to fidelity of intervention delivery because of incomplete or illogical survey data; fingerprinting enables assessment of intervention dose and how it relates to effectiveness of the tailored intervention; and a systematic process for conducting a systems test is needed to check for inconsistencies and errors before final tailored letter production. These lessons are discussed in the context of challenges and possible solutions for tailored health communication.

Key Words: tailored, process evaluation, lessons learned, repeat mammography

First published on July 7, 2006, doi:10.1177/1524839906289042

Health Promotion Practice 2008;9:281.

A more recent version of this article appeared on July 1, 2008


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