Should I include extra information in quiz questions?
It is always a good idea to offer authentic questions or tasks for assessment. So, if this additional information is authentic part of the problem, it is good to include it. For example, if you would put it in the Introduction section of your paper on the topic of the quiz, you can include it in the quiz.
However, from the reading point of view it makes it harder to process, particularly for language learners. Any unnecessary bits should be left out.
Ideally, you should find the right balance between these two contradictory factors.
tl;dr- Questions loaded with extra information can be great on homework, but exams should have more concise question statements.
Exams should avoid extra wordiness since it's extra work being put on-top of students who may already be under stress from activities outside of the class. Additionally, more distractible students might get side-trekked by the additional information.
For homework assignments, questions with extra content could be awesome! I'd stress that the extra content should be real; for example, if the question's
The following molecule is found in a marine plant species, and has shown to inhibit cancer cell growth. One possible reason is due to the following reaction of this molecule. Provide the correct products of the reaction.
, then the depicted molecule should be a real one actually found in marine species and shown to inhibit cancer cell growth. Real examples like that can help build students' general knowledge, while fake examples can pollute their knowledge base with misinformation.
The other issue is that wordier question statements can create interpretation issues in which there's more ambiguity over what information the instructor's looking for.