This is an interesting challenge! It sounds to me like a better approach for it is experimental. It is unclear what we can deduce from answers to a survey. An experiment measuring some physiological reaction as people watch the pictures might be more telling. Survey responses might be afflicted by social acceptability, even unbeknownst to the responders.

Also: the results would not reflect "perceptual responses to physical deformities" but rather responses to seeing children with/without a cleft lip. Unless you also test it? I am not sure you can generalize to deformities. Children might be perceived differently than adults (at different ages) and a cleft lip might be perceived differently from a missing limb, for example. There is also a cultural dimension, with some cultures tolerating physical differences better than others.

Sandra,

Thank you for your sound comments. We were looking into ways to measure physiologic responses and hope to be able to add measurements of eye-tracking. That is, a record of where on subjects' faces respondents look when viewing the images. For now we are limited to ye olde questionnaire approach.

Gary

Gary, sounds like the physiological approach (that gets around issues of social acceptability) is the best if you can implement it. I tend to think that weak or noisy information is not always better than none, but as an exploratory tool, the survey might work and give you ideas about where else to look. So go for it and let's see what you find!

I have posted the article you requested so you can download it now from ResearchGate.