When examining the control statements in JavaScript, which of the following best describes their purpose?

Control statements in JavaScript play a critical role in managing the flow of execution within a program. These statements are essential for creating decision-making structures that dictate how the program behaves under various conditions. By utilizing control statements such as conditional statements (like if-else) and loops (like for and while), developers can control the sequence of operations, allowing the program to respond to different scenarios dynamically.

This management of control flow enables the implementation of complex logic and functionalities, ensuring that a program can perform tasks iteratively or conditionally based on user input or other variables. It is through these statements that you can create branching paths in the code, allowing for a more interactive and responsive application.

In contrast, the other options pertain to different functionalities within JavaScript. Defining data types is related to how variables are declared, creating functions deals with encapsulating code for reuse, and storing arrays focuses on data structures for holding collections. While they are all essential aspects of programming in JavaScript, they do not define the specific purpose of control statements, which is to determine the order in which instructions are executed.