A quality control expert is performing a hypothesis test on the mean weight of a product and needs to find the critical value for a $98\%$ confidence interval based on a sample of $15$ items. If the degrees of freedom are $\text{df}=14$, what value of $\alpha$ should be used to look up the $t$-critical value, $\pm t_{\alpha /2}$, in a standard $t$-distribution table?