Yup, and I get the same results.  I have absolutely no idea why I couldn't use any of those configurations.

 

However, the good news is that with just a bit of tweaking, I was able to use the dojo.query to obtain the field value.  You use

var employer = dojo.query('[id$=\":EmployerID\"]')[0];
alert("employer:  " + employer.innerHTML);

 

I had used compositeData to bring the value of EmployerID from the custom control it was in, to the computedField2 on the current custom control.  However, with the above, I can directly access the data from the other custom control without using compositeData.  I had thought that was initially part of my problem - that the code couldn't 'see' the field because it was on another custom control and I understood that they can't see inside of each other.

Ya gotta love it when stuff works and in a more simple way than you were trying to do it!

 

Thanks so much for your help with this.  I do appreciate the suggestions.