Displaying parameter as a column. Need to increase column size

Hi,

I have a User Parameter (Datatype: Character. Width: 240).

I am  displaying this in the report along with the database columns. The query is something like this.

SELECT :p_parameter parameter_column

               ,name employee_name

FROM employees

The parameter_column gets created as a Database - Scalar column type. Datatype Varchar2 and Width 32. I need to increase the width.

I modified the query using SUBSTR.

SELECT SUBSTR(:p_parameter, 1, 240) parameter_column

               ,name employee_name

But this increases the Width only upto 96.

How can I get the width increased without having to use placeholder columns or formula columns?

Regards,

Santhosh Jose