Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging
Background Cultural tailoring of health information has been associated with better health outcomes in minority populations. While contractors and partner organizations are asked to produce culturally appropriate materials, there are no government-endorsed metrics to assess the “cultural content” of...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Taylor & Francis Group
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Health Literacy and Communication Open |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/28355245.2025.2459199 |
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| author | Claudia Parvanta Kayleigh Murray Samantha Boddupalli Natalie Erasme Rheese McNab Vijay Prajapati Arabel Severe Aura Reyes Richard Harner Rhonda Holliday |
| author_facet | Claudia Parvanta Kayleigh Murray Samantha Boddupalli Natalie Erasme Rheese McNab Vijay Prajapati Arabel Severe Aura Reyes Richard Harner Rhonda Holliday |
| author_sort | Claudia Parvanta |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Background Cultural tailoring of health information has been associated with better health outcomes in minority populations. While contractors and partner organizations are asked to produce culturally appropriate materials, there are no government-endorsed metrics to assess the “cultural content” of health communication materials.Aims To fill this implementation gap we created a cultural tailoring score that can be used to guide creation or pretesting of health communication materials. It is based on research demonstrating the importance of: (1) Levels of engagement of the intended audience in the production, (2) use of understandable and culturally meaningful language, incorporation of (3) surface cultural cues and (4) deeper cultural constructs, (5) presence of a narrative to bind the information and cultural elements into a relatable story, and (6) factors associated with concrete psychological construal level (“now,” “here,” “you”).Methods We document a trial of the cultural tailoring score conducted by graduate students identifying as Filipino, Haitian, or Hispanic/Latinx reviewing 17 ads promoting COVID-19 vaccine that had been pretested during the pandemic for perceived effectiveness with convenience samples of these same ethnic groups.Results We achieved a combined Spearman’s Rank Correlation rho of 0.45 between the cultural tailoring score and perceived effectiveness ranking of all 17 ads (individual cultural groupings range from Spearman’s rho 0.45 to 0.90), suggesting that cultural components were moderately to strongly associated with perceived effectiveness. Open-ended comments from pretesting respondents support this finding and suggest that cultural components facilitated what the Elaboration Likelihood Model describes as central processing of the main health messages, thereby enhancing health literacy.Discussion The paper discusses recommendations for further development and testing of the CTS to produce a simple tool to guide future multicultural health communication materials production or pretesting. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-964255cea9d84e24b0ad18746878c737 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2835-5245 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-12-01 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Health Literacy and Communication Open |
| spelling | doaj-art-964255cea9d84e24b0ad18746878c7372025-02-03T07:26:39ZengTaylor & Francis GroupHealth Literacy and Communication Open2835-52452025-12-013110.1080/28355245.2025.2459199Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messagingClaudia Parvanta0Kayleigh Murray1Samantha Boddupalli2Natalie Erasme3Rheese McNab4Vijay Prajapati5Arabel Severe6Aura Reyes7Richard Harner8Rhonda Holliday9College of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USACollege of Public Health, Center for Social Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USABrainvue Systems, Tampa, FL, USAMorehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USABackground Cultural tailoring of health information has been associated with better health outcomes in minority populations. While contractors and partner organizations are asked to produce culturally appropriate materials, there are no government-endorsed metrics to assess the “cultural content” of health communication materials.Aims To fill this implementation gap we created a cultural tailoring score that can be used to guide creation or pretesting of health communication materials. It is based on research demonstrating the importance of: (1) Levels of engagement of the intended audience in the production, (2) use of understandable and culturally meaningful language, incorporation of (3) surface cultural cues and (4) deeper cultural constructs, (5) presence of a narrative to bind the information and cultural elements into a relatable story, and (6) factors associated with concrete psychological construal level (“now,” “here,” “you”).Methods We document a trial of the cultural tailoring score conducted by graduate students identifying as Filipino, Haitian, or Hispanic/Latinx reviewing 17 ads promoting COVID-19 vaccine that had been pretested during the pandemic for perceived effectiveness with convenience samples of these same ethnic groups.Results We achieved a combined Spearman’s Rank Correlation rho of 0.45 between the cultural tailoring score and perceived effectiveness ranking of all 17 ads (individual cultural groupings range from Spearman’s rho 0.45 to 0.90), suggesting that cultural components were moderately to strongly associated with perceived effectiveness. Open-ended comments from pretesting respondents support this finding and suggest that cultural components facilitated what the Elaboration Likelihood Model describes as central processing of the main health messages, thereby enhancing health literacy.Discussion The paper discusses recommendations for further development and testing of the CTS to produce a simple tool to guide future multicultural health communication materials production or pretesting.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/28355245.2025.2459199Cultural appropriatenessCOVID-19health communicationelaboration likelihood modelcultural tailoring |
| spellingShingle | Claudia Parvanta Kayleigh Murray Samantha Boddupalli Natalie Erasme Rheese McNab Vijay Prajapati Arabel Severe Aura Reyes Richard Harner Rhonda Holliday Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging Health Literacy and Communication Open Cultural appropriateness COVID-19 health communication elaboration likelihood model cultural tailoring |
| title | Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging |
| title_full | Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging |
| title_fullStr | Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging |
| title_full_unstemmed | Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging |
| title_short | Development of the cultural tailoring score (CTS): a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging |
| title_sort | development of the cultural tailoring score cts a scoring instrument to assess cultural tailoring of health messaging |
| topic | Cultural appropriateness COVID-19 health communication elaboration likelihood model cultural tailoring |
| url | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/28355245.2025.2459199 |
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