The view (called Debug) which these controls are on was not checked in default values but checking it did not make a change in its behavior during Preview mode, therefore I'm attaching the form. Please delete the attachment from my post as I don't want the form to be public. Thank you.
p.s. I created a view called testing with one checkbox control (field4) where it also doesn't behave correctly. The controls I'm trying to "control" (lol) are cbShowSafetySection and rdoShowSafetySection.
p.s.s. btw I am not updating this template in the DAT tool yet because I don't want to effect existing forms on our production server. Would that make a difference?
Update: after I did all that I tried a different tactic: On my open behavior rules I was fetching an existing record to test. After I disable this rule, when I Preview the controls work! So apparently this was preventing access to Debug view controls, but why?
That is good discovery but the purpose of this control is to determine whether a form previosuly existed (i.e. was filled out and submitted already) before a certain date or is new. If it's a new form, hide the Safety section and count appropriate items and calculate new averageOverallRating but if it exists before a certain date, do not hide the section and retain previous calculations for averageOverallRating.