Read our new perspective piece on tailoring featured in Implementation in Action!

7 Mar 2023

This perspective piece discusses the conceptual tensions and practical trade-offs in tailoring implementation interventions.

Tailored interventions have been shown to be effective however the concept and process of tailoring are ill-defined in implementation science. Descriptions of how tailoring has been applied in practice are often absent or insufficient in detail. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to synthesize and replicate efforts. It also hides the trade-offs for researchers and practitioners that are inherent in the process. In this perspective piece we juxtapose the growing prominence of tailoring with four key questions surrounding the process.

Specifically, we ask:

1. What constitutes tailoring and when does it begin and end?
2. How is it expected to work?
3. Who and what does the tailoring process involve?
4. How should tailoring be evaluated?

We discuss these questions as a call to action for better reporting and further research to bring clarity, consistency, and coherence to tailoring, a key process in implementation science. The piece features in the March 2023 issue of Implementation in Action, The Center for Implementation’s monthly bulletin for implementers and intermediary organizations who are seeking to apply implementation science in a thoughtful and systematic way. You can read the full paper here.