Where I really hate to see it is humanities e.g. psychology tests/surveys - if after reading a question I immediately think of 3 different interpretations I just think it's a bad test. And if I spend any more time thinking about it I get almost nowhere.
Yes, I see it as "background" part, or "common sense" perhaps.
I's funny when for instance you have grocery questions about little Jimmy having 3 bags with 4 buns in each, so how many sausages does he need to make hotdogs with all the buns ?
That's cute and straightforward as long as you know what a hotdog is, which is common sense for the question writer.
I don't think that's something that needs to be (or can be) changed, as long as school and exams are seen as a formative step, and not a single chance you'll have to make a decent living. Kids in the later group will have a hard time either way.
Even if you don’t know what a hotdog is, it’s indicated you use sausages and buns to make them. The most straightforward method of doing that would lead to the correct answer.
There may be kids that figure that’s too simple and assume they need two or three sausages per bun, but those will be the minority.
Thankfully I think most questions usually aren't like this. Cultural loading in questions is a popular excuse for discrepancies in testing outcomes but those discrepancies have a nasty tendency to persist even when tests are redesigned. Usually there's something else going on which causes the outcome discrepancies, particularly bad parenting.