With highly publicized school shootings in the United States and abroad, people are wondering more about adolescent violence. There has been a lot of research on violence in American kids, but less in other countries. Researchers from several countries compared violent behaviors in adolescents from five different nations.

What they wanted to know: Are adolescents in some countries more likely to be violent than others?

What they did: The World Health Organization's Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study is conducted every four years in 30 European countries, the United States, and Canada. Included in the anonymous questionnaires in five countries—Israel, Sweden, Portugal, Ireland, and the United States—are questions about violence. (Estonia also asks about violence but had too few responses to be included in this report.)

What they found: Adolescents in the five countries were about the same. Occasional fighting and bullying were quite common across countries. Frequent fighting and bullying were rarer, as was carrying a weapon. Kids most likely to fight were younger boys who smoke, have been drunk, and don't like school.

What it means to you: If occasional fighting, for example, is so common across countries, the authors say it might just be a normal—if undesirable—part of adolescence.

Caveats: The questionnaires were in four different languages, so it's possible some questions didn't translate quite right (although the study designers were pretty careful about the translating). Also, kids had to report their own behavior.

Find out more: The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study: http://www.hbsc.org/

Read the article: Smith-Khuri, Eleanor, et al. "A Cross-National Study of Violence-Related Behaviors in Adolescents." Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. June 2004, Vol. 158, pp. 539–544.

An abstract is free online at http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/158/6/539