jQuery equivalent of radio button "checked" for drop down menu

Probably a simple one, but I need some help. I had some radio buttons and was using the following jQu开发者_StackOverflow社区ery to see which was checked:

var desc1 = ($('input[name=area]:checked').val());

That worked fine, but I now need to use a drop down menu instead of the radio buttons. I tried the same jQuery and also with "selected" instead of "checked" but no luck. How do I get this to work?

Thanks

What you're trying to get is in fact the value of the <select> element:

$("select").val();

The select is just a single element, the option tags doesn't end up as elements themselves.

Just use the val method to get the value of the selected option:

var desc1 = $('select[name=area]').val();