So I'm not sure why you're using the "me.parent.widgets" method to access answerVal - you should just be able to refer to it like "answerVal.text:1" I think. Not sure if this would make a difference but there might be some weird edge case?
Another possibility (and I think this is more likely), would "answer" having a number type be a problem when it's being fed a text value from answerVal.text? You may need to convert it to a number as part of the "get" function. Alternatively, since you're storing an integer that can only take 3 possible values, instead of using a field it might be neater to use a slider with a minimum value of -1 and a maximum value of 1, then you can refer to that with slider1.value. Then as the value is numeric you wouldn't have to worry about conversion.