Question

In one to two sentences, what does the p-value tell me when I conduct an inferential statistical test using sample data?

Answer 1

In a hypothesis test, there is always a null and an alternative hypothesis. The p-value is defined as the probability of getting the sample data given that the null hypothesis is true.

Therefore a lower p-value basically show that the conditional probability of null hypothesis for the given sample data is low. ( Note that p-value is not the probability of null hypothesis being true itself but it is the conditional probability of null hypothesis being true given the sample data for the test )

We reject the null hypothesis when the p-value is lower than the level of significance of the data.