a tool that structures observing so that the observations are most likely to be useful,
informative, and easily interpretable with respect to the latent proficiency.
The MMCC used open-ended items that were designed to elicit responses at all levels of
the construct. Open-ended items are not a requirement of the construct modeling approach,
however. Ordered multiple-choice items are an attempt to explicitly connect scoring guides
to the model of cognition by designing distracters that map to specific regions of the
construct (Briggs et al. 2006). As Briggs et al. have demonstrated, this coherence has
several benefits: such items typically provide more information than regular multiple-choice
items and exhibit greater validity and reliability.