Abstract: Combining cognitive diagnosis with computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing (CD-CAT) aims to more efficiently and more accurately diagnose examinees’ mastery status of a group of discretely defined skills, or attributes than paper & pencil tests. Because cognitive diagnosis involves in the concepts of attribute or knowledge state, CD-CAT is quite different from the ordinary CAT. In fact, the components of CD-CAT including the bank building, measurement model, starting rule, item selection strategy, stopping rule, and even the estimate method are very different from those of traditional CAT. In this paper, the researches and problems on these components of CD-CAT are discussed in details.

Key words: cognitive diagnosis, computerized adaptive testing, CD-CAT, attribute, knowledge state