摘要：Over the last years, there has been a growing demand for standardized achievement tests that provide useful information to educational processes, by adding diagnostic information to improve the students’ deficient areas, while maintaining advantages in technical development. This paper advocates for Tatsuoka’s rule space method (1983, 2009) as an option to incorporate the benefits of cognitive diagnostic assessment to current educational practices. The article briefly explains the process of problem solving according to some information processing theories, provides the basis for item analysis, and describes the rule space method with particular emphasis on the development of the Q matrix as a cognitive model that allows the interpretation of results. The aim of this method is to link performance on a test with specific inferences about the knowledge and skills of examinees
