PakBBQ: A Culturally Adapted Bias Benchmark for QA

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hashmat, Abdullah, Mirza, Muhammad Arham, Raza, Agha Ali
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hashmat, Abdullah
Mirza, Muhammad Arham
Raza, Agha Ali
author_facet Hashmat, Abdullah
Mirza, Muhammad Arham
Raza, Agha Ali
contents With the widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) across various applications, it is empirical to ensure their fairness across all user communities. However, most LLMs are trained and evaluated on Western centric data, with little attention paid to low-resource languages and regional contexts. To address this gap, we introduce PakBBQ, a culturally and regionally adapted extension of the original Bias Benchmark for Question Answering (BBQ) dataset. PakBBQ comprises over 214 templates, 17180 QA pairs across 8 categories in both English and Urdu, covering eight bias dimensions including age, disability, appearance, gender, socio-economic status, religious, regional affiliation, and language formality that are relevant in Pakistan. We evaluate multiple multilingual LLMs under both ambiguous and explicitly disambiguated contexts, as well as negative versus non negative question framings. Our experiments reveal (i) an average accuracy gain of 12\% with disambiguation, (ii) consistently stronger counter bias behaviors in Urdu than in English, and (iii) marked framing effects that reduce stereotypical responses when questions are posed negatively. These findings highlight the importance of contextualized benchmarks and simple prompt engineering strategies for bias mitigation in low resource settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_10186
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PakBBQ: A Culturally Adapted Bias Benchmark for QA
Hashmat, Abdullah
Mirza, Muhammad Arham
Raza, Agha Ali
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
With the widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) across various applications, it is empirical to ensure their fairness across all user communities. However, most LLMs are trained and evaluated on Western centric data, with little attention paid to low-resource languages and regional contexts. To address this gap, we introduce PakBBQ, a culturally and regionally adapted extension of the original Bias Benchmark for Question Answering (BBQ) dataset. PakBBQ comprises over 214 templates, 17180 QA pairs across 8 categories in both English and Urdu, covering eight bias dimensions including age, disability, appearance, gender, socio-economic status, religious, regional affiliation, and language formality that are relevant in Pakistan. We evaluate multiple multilingual LLMs under both ambiguous and explicitly disambiguated contexts, as well as negative versus non negative question framings. Our experiments reveal (i) an average accuracy gain of 12\% with disambiguation, (ii) consistently stronger counter bias behaviors in Urdu than in English, and (iii) marked framing effects that reduce stereotypical responses when questions are posed negatively. These findings highlight the importance of contextualized benchmarks and simple prompt engineering strategies for bias mitigation in low resource settings.
title PakBBQ: A Culturally Adapted Bias Benchmark for QA
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10186