Retrieval--Reasoning Processes for Multi-hop Question Answering: A Four-Axis Design Framework and Empirical Trends
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866915704229330944 |
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| author | Ji, Yuelyu Li, Zhuochun Meng, Rui He, Daqing |
| author_facet | Ji, Yuelyu Li, Zhuochun Meng, Rui He, Daqing |
| contents | Multi-hop question answering (QA) requires systems to iteratively retrieve evidence and reason across multiple hops. While recent RAG and agentic methods report strong results, the underlying retrieval--reasoning \emph{process} is often left implicit, making procedural choices hard to compare across model families. This survey takes the execution procedure as the unit of analysis and introduces a four-axis framework covering (A) overall execution plan, (B) index structure, (C) next-step control (strategies and triggers), and (D) stop/continue criteria. Using this schema, we map representative multi-hop QA systems and synthesize reported ablations and tendencies on standard benchmarks (e.g., HotpotQA, 2WikiMultiHopQA, MuSiQue), highlighting recurring trade-offs among effectiveness, efficiency, and evidence faithfulness. We conclude with open challenges for retrieval--reasoning agents, including structure-aware planning, transferable control policies, and robust stopping under distribution shift. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_00536 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Retrieval--Reasoning Processes for Multi-hop Question Answering: A Four-Axis Design Framework and Empirical Trends Ji, Yuelyu Li, Zhuochun Meng, Rui He, Daqing Computation and Language Multi-hop question answering (QA) requires systems to iteratively retrieve evidence and reason across multiple hops. While recent RAG and agentic methods report strong results, the underlying retrieval--reasoning \emph{process} is often left implicit, making procedural choices hard to compare across model families. This survey takes the execution procedure as the unit of analysis and introduces a four-axis framework covering (A) overall execution plan, (B) index structure, (C) next-step control (strategies and triggers), and (D) stop/continue criteria. Using this schema, we map representative multi-hop QA systems and synthesize reported ablations and tendencies on standard benchmarks (e.g., HotpotQA, 2WikiMultiHopQA, MuSiQue), highlighting recurring trade-offs among effectiveness, efficiency, and evidence faithfulness. We conclude with open challenges for retrieval--reasoning agents, including structure-aware planning, transferable control policies, and robust stopping under distribution shift. |
| title | Retrieval--Reasoning Processes for Multi-hop Question Answering: A Four-Axis Design Framework and Empirical Trends |
| topic | Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00536 |