 <p>please see fiddle</p> <p><a href="http://fiddle.jshell.net/RrD74/" rel="nofollow">http://fiddle.jshell.net/RrD74/</a></p> <p>html:</p> <pre><code> &lt;select id="mySelect"&gt; &lt;option name="xxx" value="1"&gt;text opt 1&lt;/option&gt; &lt;option name="xxx" value="2"&gt;text opt 2&lt;/option&gt; &lt;option name="xxx" value="3"&gt;text opt 3&lt;/option&gt; &lt;/select&gt; </code></pre> <p>js:</p> <pre><code> $(function () { $("#mySelect").change(function () { alert($("#mySelect option:selected").text()); }); }); </code></pre>