i have a dropdown list(flexible) and have created a label set for the answers. e.g.

1. john
2. andrew
3. james. the dropdown is working fine. when a user selects an option from the dropdown, the answer being stored in the database is the code(1,2,3) instead of the name.

how can i fix this?

It's normal that codes are recorded in the database rather than the labels, AFAIK. You could use strings like "john" as your code, I think, but be aware that codes cannot be longer than 5 characters.

But it's really a task for post-processing. In the exported data replace 1 with john, 2 with andrew, etc., if that's what you want. In SPSS the label would be the value labels, but the code numbers are what you work with for statisical analysis.

Regards.

i have labels with more than 5 characters(alot, more than 200 choices). how do i go about editing that in mysql? any other workaround of showing actual labels?

...If you are exporting the results, from "Export responses" you can select either "Answer codes" or "Full answers", the first would show "1.", the second "john". This would apply to the whole export.. can't say "Show full answer for q1, q2 etc.."

Thanks for the hint, Simon.

I don't consider this behavior a big problem. Limesurvey stores answer codes in the databases for performance reasons. At export/statistics you can always see the whole answer text.

i appreciate the responses, but in my case i am using an external apllication to connect to mysql to produce results. is there somehow i can disable storing answer codes?

also what performance issues?

If you're going directly into the db and are doing an sql select, the sql you use to get the results could be 'refined' by joining survey_xxxx with questions with labelsets (don't ask me for more detailed sql )

As said: If you connect to your database directly it's easy to get the answer text instead of the answer code by joining tables.

Check out the database documentation: docs.limesurvey.org/tiki-index.php?page=...Layout+Documentation