Following the three tier approach outlined in the book, I'm wondering how 
to handle the conversion from numeric data in the database to its textual 
representation for display.

For example, the data layer receives the value '1' from the database, 
leaving the business layer to covert that value to something like 'Yes'. 
However, in my particular application each field, or question, also has a 
weight associated with it.

Answering 'Yes' to question 1 will have a value of say, 2. While 'No' will 
have a value of 4. There's no need to store these values for each session, 
I just need a way to look them up when I need to. Which leads me towards 
using an application-level dictionary object. A quick search on Google 
tells me that this is a bad idea because of thread problems.

Can someone please suggest an alternative?

Thanks,

Andrew Pasetti