The Comprehensive Inventory of Functioning-Cancer (CIF-CA) was developed to measure actual and desired functional status in women with cancer. CIF-CA items were taken from the Inventory of Functional Status-Cancer, which measures only actual performance of usual activities. Six CIF-CA subscales measure the extent to which women perform usual personal care, family care, household, social, community, and occupational activities following diagnosis of cancer (actual functional status) and the level at which they wish to perform those activities (desired functional status). Reliability and construct validity estimates were obtained using a sample of 190 women with breast, lung, or colon cancer. Internal consistency reliability using average correlations for subscale item to subscale total scores ranged from 0.68 to 0.93 for actual functional status and from 0.61 to 0.85 for desired functional status. Internal consistency reliability coefficients for subscale to total CIF-CA scores ranged from 0.46 to 0.86 for actual functional status and from 0.62 to 0.83 for desired functional status. Initial construct validity coefficients, using subscale to subscale scores, ranged from 0.10 to 0.61 for actual functional status and from 0.33 to 0.62 for desired functional status. The data support continued development of the CIF-CA.