Significance

Significance is a stock issue that concerns whether the Affirmative's plan is important enough to be worth considering, and addresses a significant problem that is worth trying to solve.

Significance topicality

 * Main article: Significance topicality

Significance may be paired with topicality, because most NCFCA/Stoa resolutions contain the word "significantly", "substantially", or some variant thereof. Thus, if the Affirmative's plan is not big enough to count as a "significant" action, it is not topical.

While related, this is a fundamentally different argument from the stock issue of significance. Significance topicality addresses the scope of the plan - how "big" of a change the reform is, compared to the status quo. By contrast, the stock issue of significance addresses the importance of the plan. For example, an Affirmative plan might try to standardize toothpick lengths by completely overhauling the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. This is a significant reform (under significance topicality), but not really a significant case (under the stock issue of significance.)

In practice, the two are sometimes linked: the significance of changing one word in a law, for example, may be best determined by examining the significance of its effects.