1. A method, in a data processing system comprising a processor and a memory, for validating a candidate answer to an input question, the method comprising: generating, by the data processing system, a candidate answer to an input question using a natural language processing of the input question and a corpus of information from which the candidate answer is identified; selecting, by the data processing system, a validator to apply to the candidate answer based on a characteristic of a correct answer for the input question; applying, by the data processing system, the validator to the candidate answer to evaluate whether or not one or more criteria of the validator are satisfied by the candidate answer; generating, by the data processing system, validation information based the evaluation of whether or not criteria of the validator are met by the candidate answer; and storing, by the data processing system, the validation information in a validation status object associated with the input question.