What does your confidence level mean when building a confidence interval?

A confidence interval quantifies the uncertainty around an estimate. A higher confidence level, like 95%, means that if we were to repeat the sampling process many times, 95% of the calculated intervals would contain the true population parameter. This increased certainty comes at the cost of a wider interval. Conversely, a lower confidence level yields a narrower interval, but with less assurance that it captures the true parameter.