Characterising LLM-Generated Competency Questions: a Cross-Domain Empirical Study using Open and Closed Models

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Hauptverfasser: Alharbi, Reham, Tamma, Valentina, Payne, Terry R., de Berardinis, Jacopo
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Alharbi, Reham
Tamma, Valentina
Payne, Terry R.
de Berardinis, Jacopo
author_facet Alharbi, Reham
Tamma, Valentina
Payne, Terry R.
de Berardinis, Jacopo
contents Competency Questions (CQs) are a cornerstone of requirement elicitation in ontology engineering. CQs represent requirements as a set of natural language questions that an ontology should satisfy; they are traditionally modelled by ontology engineers together with domain experts as part of a human-centred, manual elicitation process. The use of Generative AI automates CQ creation at scale, therefore democratising the process of generation, widening stakeholder engagement, and ultimately broadening access to ontology engineering. However, given the large and heterogeneous landscape of LLMs, varying in dimensions such as parameter scale, task and domain specialisation, and accessibility, it is crucial to characterise and understand the intrinsic, observable properties of the CQs they produce (e.g., readability, structural complexity) through a systematic, cross-domain analysis. This paper introduces a set of quantitative measures for the systematic comparison of CQs across multiple dimensions. Using CQs generated from well defined use cases and scenarios, we identify their salient properties, including readability, relevance with respect to the input text and structural complexity of the generated questions. We conduct our experiments over a set of use cases and requirements using a range of LLMs, including both open (KimiK2-1T, LLama3.1-8B, LLama3.2-3B) and closed models (Gemini 2.5 Pro, GPT 4.1). Our analysis demonstrates that LLM performance reflects distinct generation profiles shaped by the use case.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_16258
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Characterising LLM-Generated Competency Questions: a Cross-Domain Empirical Study using Open and Closed Models
Alharbi, Reham
Tamma, Valentina
Payne, Terry R.
de Berardinis, Jacopo
Artificial Intelligence
Competency Questions (CQs) are a cornerstone of requirement elicitation in ontology engineering. CQs represent requirements as a set of natural language questions that an ontology should satisfy; they are traditionally modelled by ontology engineers together with domain experts as part of a human-centred, manual elicitation process. The use of Generative AI automates CQ creation at scale, therefore democratising the process of generation, widening stakeholder engagement, and ultimately broadening access to ontology engineering. However, given the large and heterogeneous landscape of LLMs, varying in dimensions such as parameter scale, task and domain specialisation, and accessibility, it is crucial to characterise and understand the intrinsic, observable properties of the CQs they produce (e.g., readability, structural complexity) through a systematic, cross-domain analysis. This paper introduces a set of quantitative measures for the systematic comparison of CQs across multiple dimensions. Using CQs generated from well defined use cases and scenarios, we identify their salient properties, including readability, relevance with respect to the input text and structural complexity of the generated questions. We conduct our experiments over a set of use cases and requirements using a range of LLMs, including both open (KimiK2-1T, LLama3.1-8B, LLama3.2-3B) and closed models (Gemini 2.5 Pro, GPT 4.1). Our analysis demonstrates that LLM performance reflects distinct generation profiles shaped by the use case.
title Characterising LLM-Generated Competency Questions: a Cross-Domain Empirical Study using Open and Closed Models
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16258