Specila characters support in multiselect connector xml

Hi,
I am using connector to loading multiselect options.
But my problem is if item text and value are contains any special characters like & it is giving wrong output.
For example item text is (sample&sample) it is loading (sample&sample).
so how can i overcome this problem.
can we use CDATA for this options loading?

What record do you have in database, is it “sample&sample” or sample&sample ?
Connector itself doesn’t add extra layer of escaping, it transfer data as is ( it actually uses cdata sections for tag values )