Kendo Dropdown: getting the selected item You could use the dataItem method of the ComboBox/Dropdown to get the model for the selected item. As a side note, the context of the event handler is the ComboBox and it is accessible via this . E.g. function change(e) { var text = this .text(); var value = this .value(); var object = this .dataItem( this .select()); } I hope that this information was helpful for you. I wish you a great day! and another way is : var ddl = $ ( "#ddl" ). data ( "kendoDropDownList" ). dataItem ( $ ( "#ddl" ). data ( "kendoDropDownList" ). select ()). FieldName ; //FieldName is the text field of DataSource --- .DataTextField("FieldName") Ref : http://www.telerik.com/forums/getting-the-selected-item Ref : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21600895/how-to-get-dropdowns-selected-items-tex...