Some elements have more than one choice, or can submit more than one value.
Creating the form element. Populate a list of lists with values for the option list.
set foo_options [db_list_of_lists foo_option_list " select foo, foo_id from foos "]
The variable foo_options should resemble {{first foo} 1234} {{second foo} 1235}
Within ad_form, set up the element to use this list:
{foo:text(select) {label "Which Foo"} {options $foo_options} }
This will result in a single name/value pair coming back in the submitted form. Handle this within the same ad_form structure, in the -new_data and -edit_data. In the example, it is available as $foo
See also the W3C spec for "The SELECT, OPTGROUP, and OPTION elements".