The paper discusses the issue of validation in research guided by the method of cartography. It defines a guideline for validation and distinguishes three indicators for validation. It proposes that validation is assessed on three levels of evaluation: researcher's self-assessment, assessment by the research participants and peer review. This process will result in a distributed validation, as none of these three levels alone can account for the evaluation of the research process. Finally the paper argues that the validation of a cartographic research takes place throughout the process rather than just at the end of the investigation.
Validation; cartography; intervention research; participatory research