ABSTRACT
Tailored health communication is assessment-based. Therefore, once the background
research process has been completed and key determinants of change have been
identified, each individual’s status on these determinants must be measured. Although
some tailoring data may be obtained from existing databases such as a patient’s
computerized medical record (Rimer & Glassman, 1998), in most cases a tailoring
assessment questionnaire must be developed to gather this information. This phase in the
process of developing a tailored health communication program is primarily a
questionnaire construction task. The objective is to create an assessment that is thorough
in addressing all important determinants, yet relatively brief and simple for participants to
complete, and easy to administer. Its questions should be conceptually clear and easily
understood by participants, and should offer a wide enough range of response options to
capture most of the variation among individuals on the key determinants. This chapter
describes how to construct a tailoring assessment questionnaire that has these
characteristics.
