Child weighing by the unschooled: a report of a controlled study of growth monitoring over 12 months of Maasai children using direct recording scales.

Growth monitoring was developed as a clinic-based programme in the early 1960s, and has spread widely in many countries. The results of weighing children are usually presented in a graphic form, unintelligible to most mothers and difficult for many health workers to interpret. This study suggests that the TALC Direct Recording Scale will allow growth monitoring to be undertaken even by illiterate mothers in the community and reports the results of a trial with a group of illiterate mothers amongst the Maasai of Kenya.