  It is well-known that in some situations it is not easy to compute the
likelihood function as the datasets might be large or the model is too complex.
In that contexts composite likelihood, derived by multiplying the likelihoods
of subjects of the variables, may be useful. The extension of the classical
likelihood ratio test statistics to the framework of composite likelihoods is
used as a procedure to solve the problem of testing in the context of composite
likelihood. In this paper we introduce and study a new family of test
statistics for composite likelihood: Composite {\phi}-divergence test
statistics for solving the problem of testing a simple null hypothesis or a
composite null hypothesis. To do that we introduce and study the asymptotic
distribution of the restricted maximum composite likelihood estimate.
