How does AirBnB's host onboarding form use javascript to let a button set a text_field value?

Question

I'm trying to build an onboarding form similar to the one AirBnB uses for their hosts. (https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/new) In particular, I want to let users select a text_field value from 5 options via custom buttons, much like AirBnB's "Home Type".

So far, I've got a hidden_field in my Rails form, like so:

<%= f.hidden_field :provider_type_id, :id => "account_provider_type_id", :value => @account.provider_type_id %>

I'd like the user to be able to select :provider_type_id from among ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5"].

I've also got a button-group consisting of five buttons. Here's an example of one:

<li><a href="#provider_type_select" class="button secondary small has-tip" data-provider-type-id="5" data-tooltip data-selector="tooltip-helpful-hobbyist"><i class="fi-marker"></i><br />Helpful<br />Hobbyist</a></li>

I'm hoping to use the data-attribute data-provider-type-id here to set the value of :provider_type_id in my hidden_field using javascript.

Here's what I have so far for the javascript/jQuery (at top of the view template for now):

<script>
$('.button.secondary.small.has-tip').click(function() {
  $('#account_provider_type_id').val(($(this)).data('provider-type-id'));
});
</script>

The console doesn't show any javascript errors when I load the page. When I submit the form, other parameters are passed successfully, as evidenced in the development log, but the provider_type_id shows up as "" in the params no matter which button I click.

Started POST "/providers" for 127.0.0.1 at 2014-11-21 08:22:35 -0600
Processing by ProvidersController#create as HTML
  Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"CTNddtfybyj/TvWY1nwTFlEq7kq/+tBydLjO50g54aE=", "account"=>{"provider_type_id"=>"", "contact_address_1"=>"", "contact_city"=>"", "contact_state"=>"", "contact_zip"=>"", "contact_country"=>""}, "new_provider"=>"Continue"}

Any suggestions on how I might go about diagnosing the problem? [I don't really know how to use the javascript console to step through what's happening here.)

Is the data-attribute approach basically sound?

Any other counsel on the general concept of using javascript to set the value of a hidden_field?

Thanks very much,

Dean Richardson