We are carrying out a three-year research , which purports, among other aspects, to assess to what extent attitudes of university students have an influence on their academic achievement. It is a topic which has not been much researched (Alkhateeb, 2002, Pintrich, 1995; Pintrich and García, 1991; Valle, González, Gómez Cabanach, Núñez, Suárez, Piñeiro and Rodríguez, 2000). The conclusions herein exposed are the result of our first year of work. Due to the lack of an assesment instrument fitted to our research objectives, we developed a questionnaire for evaluating attitudes of university students toward learning (AUSLQ, Attitudes of University Students toward Learning Questionnaire) The 14-item questionnaire is constructed using Likert-scale format with five possible answers for each item, ranging from "strongly disagree" to " strongly agree". Items were formulated following Fishbein and Ajzen model (1975, 1980, 1990), including beliefs, attitudes, subjective rules and intentions. The questionnaire was validated with a 545-student sample from the two public universities of the city of Valencia (Spain): University of Valencia/Estudi General (UVEG), with approximately 46.000 students, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), with approximately 30.000 students. There were 319 students from UVEG and 226 students from UPV. Previously, we had carried out a representative sampling of students from both universities, which was balanced proportionally for both universities with a level of confidence of 95% and a maximum margin of error of 5%. The questionnaire obtained an acceptable degree of internal consistency. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the 14 items was .683. It was carried out a factor analysis of the principal components with varimax rotation in order to verify the construct validity, and four factors were found which accounted for 53,207% of the variance. The first factor implies a valuation of a deep, critical and comprehensible learning, willingness to an active learning and liking for hard studying; the second factor implies a positive valuation and liking for working in teams; the third factor implies work and interest which is not dependant on the professor or on his/her lectures; and finally, the fourth factor implies internal attributions: passing an exam depends on one's effort and obtaining good grades is mainly a result of a personal effort than a matter of good luck. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the four factors was the following: .749 for the first factor, .702 for the second factor, .515 for the third factor and .494 for the fourth factor. Later, it was established a correlation between factor scores and student grades through Pearson correlation, where significant correlations were found between grades and the first factor. Also, we found significant positive correlations between grades and the fourth factor. There were no significant correlations in the second factor, unlike the third factor, where significant correlations were found in some cases. Therefore, there is a positive relation between good attitudes toward learning and academic achievement. Also, it was carried out a cluster analysis following k-means procedure presenting factor scores as variables in order to establish student groups formed depending on their attitudes toward learning. Three groups were found: two groups had a positive attitudinal profile (the first one consisting of 146 students, the second of 208 students) and the third group had a negative attitudinal profile (with 187 students). Later, existing differences in grades were examined (ANOVA plus post hoc) between established groups according to their attitudinal profiles, where significant differences were found benefiting those groups with more positive attitudinal profiles. The results confirm a clear relation between both groups of variables (attitudes and grades). On later stages we will prove this relation within a more complex structure (taking the model developed by Gargallo (2002) as starting point, which is based on models developed by Ramsden (1985), Biggs (1993) and Pintrich and Strauben (1992). It will include the influence of student attitudes on their academic achievement together with other relevant dimensions.