We have developed a procedure to study the helicity of the W boson in [Formula: see text] events. Using events generated with the PYTHIA program at a top Mt = 175 GeV/c2, we employ a maximum likelihood method to extract the fraction of right-handed, longitudinal and left-handed W bosons in top decays. Assuming V–A coupling in the decay, we obtain a longitudinal fraction of 0.696±0.097 for 50 simulated experiments of 100 events in lepton+jets [Formula: see text] final states, a result that is consistent with the input fraction of 0.703.