A Procedure for Assessing the Completeness of the Q-Matrices of Cognitively Diagnostic Tests

The Q-matrix of a cognitively diagnostic test is said to be complete if it allows for the identification of all possible proficiency classes among examinees. Completeness of the Q-matrix is therefore a key requirement for any cognitively diagnostic test. However, completeness of the Q-matrix is often difficult to establish, especially, for tests with a large number of items involving multiple attributes. As an additional complication, completeness is not an intrinsic property of the Q-matrix, but can only be assessed in reference to a specific cognitive diagnosis model (CDM) supposed to underly the data—that is, the Q-matrix of a given test can be complete for one model but incomplete for another. In this article, a method is presented for assessing whether a given Q-matrix is complete for a given CDM. The proposed procedure relies on the theoretical framework of general CDMs and is therefore legitimate for CDMs that can be reparameterized as a general CDM.