Feature class with attribute pick lists for values, without a Coded Value Domain?

Question

I have a feature class with a fields I'd like to restrict to certain values. I'm aware of coded-value-domains, where I can have lookup table that translates the real-code-recorded-in-table into a human-friendly-rendering of that value, e.g.:

+-----------------+----------------------------+
| SurveyTech_Code |      Survey_Technique      |
+-----------------+----------------------------+
|               0 | Guess                      |
|               1 | Total count                |
|               2 | Stratified random quadrate |
|               3 | Extrapolation              |
|               4 | Direct photocount          |
+-----------------+----------------------------+

However what I want is to have the real-recorded-value and the human-friendly-value be the same thing. Is creating a coded value domain like the below the only way?

+----------------------------+----------------------------+
|      SurveyTech_Code       |      Survey_Technique      |
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| Guess                      | Guess                      |
| Total count                | Total count                |
| Stratified random quadrate | Stratified random quadrate |
| Extrapolation              | Extrapolation              |
| Direct photocount          | Direct photocount          |
+----------------------------+----------------------------+

Coded Value Domains are a bit laborious to create and assign. I'm hoping for something like "select field name, type list of valid values" (well, paste actually), and then when editing or creating features just selecting from the list.

I don't care about space constraints or the (possible) performance gains from using numeric lookups as these are in a file geodatabase. Also it would make exporting to shapefile painless (not like this).

Answer 1

If you read the usage section here the feature class to feature class can export the domain description. There are tools for loading tables into Domains, they are all discussed here. Finally you can have your text values just use a text field instead of a short!