Introduction: Health literacy is a term that was introduced in the 1970s and has become increasingly important in public health and health care. It relates to the capacities of individuals to meet the complex health needs of modern society. Affordances are features in the environment that refer to the compatibility between individual characteristics and environmental opportunities for actions that objects, events or places in the environment provide for humans. Mothers with greater health literacy provide their children with opportunities to engage in activities that foster the learning and development of motor skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between mother's health literacy and the affordance of tools in the home environment with the development of gross motor skills.
Methodology The research methodology employed was correlational and applied. In this study, a sample of 100 children, aged 7 to 10 years, was selected through cluster random sampling from elementary schools in Tabriz city. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency was administered to assess the children’s gross motor development skills. Additionally, the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) was utilized to measure health literacy. To evaluate environmental factors affecting gross motor development, a specialized questionnaire was employed. Upon the completion of data collection, the Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for statistical analysis
Results: The research results indicated that there is a positive and significant correlation between mothers’ health literacy and the development of children’s gross motor skills, with a correlation coefficient (r = 0.6) and a significance level (p < 0.05). Conversely, the study found no significant correlation between the affordance and the development of gross motor skills, as evidenced by a correlation coefficient (r = 0.09) and a significance level (p = 0.05).
Conclusion: These findings suggest that mothers with higher health literacy levels are likely to create environments conducive to enhanced motor development in their children. As for the link between environmental affordances and the development of gross motor skills, further research is recommended to explore this relationship.