Advanced Button set

Several years ago I built a custom questionnaire requiring statements at the right and left side of a likert 4-button scale that I built manually.

I'm updating the questionnaire and just checking that there is (still) no way in SL360 of associating a whole button set with a variable? I have six pages each with five questions. I'm having to use an 'if selected' trigger for each button, that's 120 triggers! (I could use a slider to save some labour, but I'd like to stick with buttons if possible.) 

Second question - I could adapt the built-in Likert question slide. But would I be right in thinking that (after all this time) there is still no way to access a variable that stores the selected value for each statement?