eli5, Research Articles: What does “intervention”

Question

There’s multiple columns but on the first it states “Intervention, first name, and year”. Under it has examples like “Alpert (12) 2014” & “Bambling (13) 2015”. I’m obviously assuming that the number in parentheses is the Intervention. What the heck do these numbers mean after the name?

In: 0

Answer 1

These sound more like reference numbers. Any proper research article references others to build on and to support their own claims and speculations, and these references are listed at the end. The examples you note probably include the name of the first author, year of publication, and number in that list.

It would be helpful if you linked this paper.