The nation's youth are increasingly affected by violence, both as its perpetrators and as its victims. Many violence prevention programs aim to reverse this trend, but few have been rigorously evaluated, and even fewer have been shown to work. To devise better programs, researchers need more information. To that end, RAND researchers identified "early predictors" of violence--personality traits, demographic characteristics, social influences, and behaviors in early adolescence that increase the likelihood of engaging in violent behavior a few years later. They distilled characteristics of seventh-graders and their environments that consistently led to violence a few years later, and their findings are summarized in this report. (Contains 2 tables.) [This research brief describes work documented in "Early Predictors of Adolescent Violence," American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 90, No. 4, April 2000, pp. 566-572.]