Unable to get radio button value in Bootstrap - radio-button

Question

NOTE: Please see edit below. Primary issue is that I did something dumb.
This question is a duplicate, but the accepted answer didn't actually address the problem, and the listed workaround didn't work for me.
My HTML looks like this:
<div class="row checkbox_row">
<div class="col-xs-1 checkbox_cell">
<input type="radio" class="answerCheckbox assessmentQuestion" name="currently_employed_select" value="yes" id="currently_employed_select_1"/>
</div>
<div class="col-xs-11">Yes</div>
</div>
<div class="row checkbox_row">
<div class="col-xs-1 checkbox_cell">
<input type="radio" class="answerCheckbox assessmentQuestion" name="currently_employed_select" value="no" id="currently_employed_select_2"/>
</div>
<div class="col-xs-11">No</div>
</div>
Neither this jQuery:
var name = $(this).attr('name');
var value = $('input[name=' + name + ']:radio:checked').val();
Nor this Javascript:
var radios = document.getElementsByTagName(name);
for(var x = 0; x < radios.length; x++){
if(radios[x].checked){
return radios[x].value;
}
}
... are getting a value out of the radio button.
Is there something obvious and stupid I'm overlooking here? Is there some Bootstrap formatting that's mandatory when using radio buttons?
EDIT: I've figured out what piece of code is killing me, and it has bugger-all to do with Bootstrap.
This:
$(document).ready(function() {
$('.answerCheckbox').val(function() {
highlightCheckedRow(this);
});
... is meant to highlight the container rows of any checked boxes (including radio buttons) on page load. Which it does, admirably, but apparently at the expense of nuking the values of said radio buttons.
... which, given that val() overwrites the value when you give it a parameter, should not come as a surprise to me.
That'll teach me to do cargo cult programming.
Right, so, need to figure out some other way to run that function on all my answerCheckbox elements on page load, and I'm all set.