Final answer:
Hypothesis testing involves comparing the p-value to the significance level (alpha) to make a decision on the null hypothesis (H0). If the p-value is less than alpha, H0 is rejected; if greater, H0 is not rejected.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question relates to hypothesis testing in statistics, specifically to how we make decisions about the null hypothesis (H0) based on the p-value and the significance level (alpha). In hypothesis testing, we compare the p-value to alpha to decide whether to reject or not reject H0.
When the p-value is less than alpha (α), which is the significance level, we reject the null hypothesis as there is sufficient evidence against it. Conversely, if the p-value is greater than alpha, we do not reject the null hypothesis because we don't have enough evidence to do so, indicating that the sample data are consistent with H0.
To illustrate, if alpha is set to 0.05 and the calculated p-value is 0.0396, since the p-value is lower (α > p-value), we would reject H0. On the other hand, if the p-value were 0.2296, as mentioned in the initial example, it's greater than alpha of 0.01; thus, we do not reject H0.