Oxidative dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde has been performed on vanadium based catalysts prepared by grafting on titania-sitica supports with different procedures. A comparison of the performances of the prepared catalysts in terms of activity and selectivity has been made. Grafting technique gives place to well dispersed catalysts that resulted more selective than catalysts prepared by impregnation. In particular, very selective catalysts have been obtained by grafting vanadium-titanium bimetallic alkoxides directly on silica support. The effect of both the preparation methods and the used supports on the catalytic performances have been studied and an attempt to correlate the observed properties with the obtained results has been made. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.