Ruward

Ruward-1 is a system for measuring an individual's basic manual skills and expressing them in terms of industrial functioning. Both Ruward-1 and the Mast-1 system were primarily developed to gain insight into the manual skills of individuals within an industrial setting.

The level of manual skills here is equivalent to the concept of "normal time".
The classification of any job in terms of manual skills and functioning levels required for satisfactory performance also enables male-female/job comparison using a computer program based on Excel or Access.

In fact, the system consists of 19 separate tasks, also known as work assignments. To avoid confusion with tests from psychotechnics, these tasks were initially referred to as "manual skills tests".

The movement pattern of the first test was chosen such that the movements Reaching, Grasping, and Moving occur in their most elementary form. The movement Placing does not yet occur due to the simplicity of the first six tests. Starting from test 1, the difficulty increases by one influence factor per test. Test 19 is composed of a broad combination of influence factors from the test 1 overview and the test table.

The goal of this systematic structure is to determine at which influence factor a person's manual dexterity decreases or is completely absent.

Unlike the Mast systems, the Ruward-1 system is in principle not “mobile”; consequently, a fixed location is more or less necessary.

The Committee on Test Matters Netherlands (COTAN) of the NIP (Dutch Institute of Psychologists) promotes the quality of tests and test usage in the Netherlands. Furthermore, COTAN informs test users about the state of affairs in the field of testing. The Ruward-1 test system is COTAN standardized.