hi Shivanagar, Thanks for your quick reply

I created a table as you said named "tableEthnicity"
defined all the columns (ECID, ETID, ECName, ETName)

inserted all the values :
 ECID     ETID     ECName                 ETName
  1             1         Jewish                Ashkenazi Jewish
 1          2       Jewish            Sephardic Jewish
 2          1       European        Northern 
 2          2       European        Central
 2          3       European        Scandinavian
 3          1       Asian             chinese
 3          2       Asian              japanese
 3          3       Asian              thai 
-----------------------------------------------------
in combo box 1:  row source type = table/query
                              row source =  select distinct ECName from tableEthnicity

in combo box 2: row source type = value list
                              row source =  Ashkenazi Jewish; Sephardic Jewish; Northern; Central; Scandinavian; chinese; japanese; thai

(please correct me if i should call combo box 2  fields from table ethnicity too)

------------------------------
i wrote the scripts as you mentioned in an "EventProcedure" for comboBox1 AfterUpdate.
but as soon as i select a field from comboBox 1 in form view it gives me compile error :  Method or data member not found highlighting .RowSource

again i don't know much about VB codes but when i type comboBox 2 followed by dot (.) it gives me only one option i.e. comboBox2.value ,  if i type ComboBox1 followed by dot then i can see the option for Rowsource.

please let me know what am i doing wrong. Thanks for your help and time.