title: synchronous ajax call via jquery returning string
body: <p>I am making a jQuery synchronous call to ajax -- with the return type set to "json" --  however the return data is coming back as a string.  Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is there away to convert the string to an object?</p>
  
  <pre><code>var ajax_response = $.ajax({url:"ajx_services", async:false, type:"post", data:{method: "getItem", item_no: $(ctx).val()}, dataType:"json"});
  var data = ajax_response.responseText;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The ajax call is working, as I can see the results in the debugger, it is simply that the returned data is in a string.</p>