sleepy_az - 7:56 pm on Apr 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

Yes - sounds like discussions at the usability lab - everyone with differing ideas to test out.

In terms of categorizing within a select element - using just plain text - you could do something like:

=========
Category A
- group a1
- group a2
=========
Category B
- group b1
- group b2
- group b3
=========
and so on....

CHECKBOXES
Another idea would be to test out the form using CheckBoxes (yes, 80 of them :)

Actually you might find that this is the most "easy to use, fool proof" approach in terms of usability and reducing error rate.