need help creating an alert inside Autocomplete ajax

need help creating an alert inside Autocomplete ajax

I'm having trouble creating an alert to see the data inside the success function.  The code is below and does not create a drop down table, though other things work.  I'm trying to look at the returned data in the success function and at the values of the label and value items. The alerts I've tried do not trigger, or create syntax errors. What alert(s) should I use?

jQuery Autocomplete ajax:

        $("#stateProvince").autocomplete
        ({
            source: function( request, response )
            {            
                //Pass the selected country to the query to limit the selection to just that country
                $.ajax(
                {
                    url: "getStateProvince.php",
                    data: {
                            term: request.term,
                            country: $('input[name=country]:checked').val(),    //Pass the selected country to php
                          },       
                    type: "POST",  // a jQuery ajax POST transmits in querystring format in utf-8
                    dataType: "json",   //return data in json format                                                                        
                    success: function( data )
                    {                      
                        response( $.map( data, function( item )
                        {
                            return{                                   
                                    label: item.stateName,
                                    value: item.stateAbbrev                                
                                   }
                        }));
                    }
                });               
            },
            minLength: 2
        });

example of array of JSON objects created by the php:

[{"stateName":"Alabama","stateAbbrev":"AL"},{"stateName":"Alaska","stateAbbrev":"AK"}]