The present study focuses on motivational constructs and their effect on students' academic achievement within an existing statistics course. First-year Health Sciences students completed a questionnaire that measures several motivational constructs: dimensions of causal attributions, outcome expectancy, affect, and study behaviour, all with respect to statistics. The results showed that when the cause of negative events was perceived as uncontrollable, outcome expectancy was negative. When the cause of negative events was perceived as stable, affect toward statistics was negative. Furthermore, negative affect toward statistics and limited study behaviour led to unsatisfactory achievements. Path analysis (Lisrel) largely confirmed the causal relations in a model that was based on attributional and learned helplessness theories. The consequences of these findings for statistics education are discussed. (Contains 2 figures and 5 tables.)