RAG Retrieval Invariants Measure

A RAG Retrieval Invariants Measure is a system performance measure that evaluates RAG system faithfulness through context relevance, groundedness, and answer consistency metrics.

• AKA: RAG Faithfulness Metric, Retrieval-Augmented Generation Quality Measure, RAG Invariant Score, RAG Triad Measure.
• Context:
  • It can typically assess context relevance by measuring query-document alignment with semantic similarity scores.
  • It can typically evaluate groundedness through answer-source verification with citation accuracy checks.
  • It can typically measure answer relevance via response-query consistency with intent fulfillment scores.
  • It can often detect hallucination patterns through unsupported claim identification with factuality verification.
  • It can often support component-level debugging by isolating retrieval failures from generation errors.
  • It can often integrate with RAG evaluation frameworks for automated quality monitoring with threshold-based alerts.
  • It can range from being a Binary Invariant Measure to being a Continuous Invariant Measure, depending on its scoring granularity.
  • It can range from being a Single-Aspect Measure to being a Composite Measure, depending on its dimension coverage.
  • It can range from being a Automated Measure to being a Human-Validated Measure, depending on its evaluation method.
  • It can range from being a Real-Time Measure to being a Batch Measure, depending on its computation timing.
  • ...
• Examples:
  • RAG Triad Component Measures, such as:
    • Context Relevance Score measuring retrieval precision for query intent.
    • Groundedness Score validating factual support in source documents.
    • Answer Relevance Score assessing response completeness and coherence.
  • Domain-Specific RAG Measures, such as:
    • Legal RAG Invariants Measure for citation accuracy and precedent relevance.
    • Medical RAG Invariants Measure ensuring clinical guideline adherence.
  • Advanced RAG Measures, such as:
    • Multi-Hop RAG Invariants for reasoning chain validation.
  • ...
• Counter-Examples:
  • General Text Quality Metric, which lacks retrieval-specific evaluation.
  • Pure Generation Metric, which ignores source grounding requirement.
  • Retrieval-Only Metric, which misses generation quality aspect.
• See: RAG System, Retrieval Quality Measure, Generation Quality Metric, Hallucination Detection, Information Retrieval Metric, Groundedness Evaluation, RAG System Progression Testing Task.

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