Trying to validate a form using QuickForm

I have a form set up using QuickForm and everything's fine until I try to access grouped items. For all individual elements, I have no problem, but when I try and use grouped items I get a warning; I am doing it like this ....... $form->addElement('text', 'status', 'Status: '); $form->addElement('text', 'usregroup', 'User Group: '); $group[] =& HTML_QuickForm::createElement('text', 'first', 'First Name'); $group[] =& HTML_QuickForm::createElement('text', 'last', 'Last Name'); $form->addGroup($group, 'name', 'Name:', ', '); ..... echo htmlspecialchars($form->exportValue('name')); Warning: htmlspecialchars() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given I guess it's because grouped items are passed as an array, but I'm not sure how to access them so as to further process them. I want to pass each value to a DB_DataObject, like $staff = new DataObject_Staff(); $staff->first = htmlspecialchars($form->exportValue('first')); ........ Don't know if this is the right way to do it? Thanks Ger