Reporting standards for studies of tailored interventions

Message tailoring is a promising innovative approach to persuasive communication that involves designing messages to meet a person's psychological, behavioral and/or demographic characteristics. Although the tailored intervention literature has many strengths, a weakness is inconsistency in reporting information related to intervention development, implementation and evaluation. The objective of this manuscript is to report recommendations for studies of tailored interventions. As part of ongoing original empirical and meta-analytical research, we reviewed the tailoring literature and identified inconsistencies in reporting. We compared these inconsistencies with existing reporting standards and developed recommendations specific to tailored interventions. An advisory board of preeminent tailoring researchers provided feedback on draft and final recommendations. This paper offers the resulting seven recommendations for reporting studies of tailored interventions. If we are to build a cumulative science of tailoring, both for theory development and research translation, then we should establish standards in the conduct and reporting of the science.