Checkboxes, PHP, and MySQL

I've looked around in a few of the PHP lists for an answer to this, but can't come up with one. Here's what I am doing: I have a form with a few checkboxes. When the information as to whether the checkboxes are checked or not is 'saved' into the MySQL table, they are represented by a value of '1' - fine. When I want to edit this information, in the form of a similar form with checkboxes, the boxes are not checked off if they were before. What I am stuck on is how a checkbox can get checked off when pulling information from the MySQL as an array. Here's a line of code showing my array coming out. <input type=checkbox name=firstvalue value='$result[32]'> $result is the array. I guess what I am asking is that if a checkbox is assigned a value of one, why doesn't it appear as already checked off? Thanks, -Mike