Abstract The motivation to learn, as a socio-affective component, has been investigated as a facilitating phenomenon for the permanence of young people in formal education. The aim of this study was to seek evidence of content and the internal structure of the items that make up an instrument to identify the motivational quality for learning with the use of DICT (EMA - TDIC), with its scope being students in high school and higher education. Participants in this study were 822 students, who responded collectively to the scale. Descriptive and exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) analysis of the items were performed. The CFA results corroborated the structural model established in the EFA, that is, the three-dimensional structure was confirmed: Controlled Motivation, Autonomous Motivation and Demotivation. New studies are underway, aiming to expand the psychometric evidence of the instrument, increasing the possibilities of making this questionnaire useful in educational contexts.