The development of the communicative competence test for college business majors described in this paper consisted of three phases. The first phase identified as desirable the following communication behaviors: planning, logic, perception, communication without fear or anxiety, listening, oral communication, conference leadership, and nonverbal communication. Phase two focused on the selection of appropriate test items for the selected competencies; for economic reasons and to avoid the lack of interjudge reliability, cognitive items were chosen over behavioral measures. The third phase, now in progress, involves testing the items through item analysis and factor analytic techniques. To date, 92 multiple choice items have been administered to students in 33 introductory college course sections. The items will undergo repeated revisions until the test represents a satisfactory measure of communicative competence. (MAI)