How To Become A Clinical Data Associate: What It Is and Career Path

What is a clinical data associate and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

While healthcare research professionals need to understand how to accurately organize and file their documentation, a Clinical Data Associate is there to handle the heavy lifting for almost every department. If file organization, document tracking, or even program development sounds enticing to you, this is a great position to start in. You need to be adept at math, have good communication and analytical thinking skills. Clinical Data Associates need to be able to help clinical researchers document and record data.

With the rest of your data collection team, you'll be using the tools and software required by each program to track, analyze, and record data for various research programs. You'll most likely need to have at least a bachelor's degree to apply for a Clinical Data Associate position, specializing in a field like health care administration, nursing, or even biology. You'll be expected to have clinical research experience and data management capabilities to easily fold into a preexisting team. While this full-time job can have long hours working side by side with various research teams, on average, Clinical Data Associates make about $80,000 per year.

ScoreClinical Data AssociateUS Average

Salary

7.7

Avg. Salary $101,829

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.9

Growth rate 31%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.22%

Asian 22.75%

Black or African American 5.06%

Hispanic or Latino 7.59%

Unknown 4.95%

White 59.43%

Gender

female 72.84%

male 27.16%

Age - 35

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 35

Stress level

4.9

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

7.2

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.2

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a clinical data associate

Explore clinical data associate education requirements

Most common clinical data associate degrees

Bachelor's

72.1 %

Master's

12.5 %

Associate

11.5 %

Start to develop specific clinical data associate skills

Skills	Percentages
Data Review	8.11%
Data Management	7.33%
FDA	6.80%
SAS	6.00%
Clinical Trial Data	5.61%

Complete relevant clinical data associate training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New clinical data associates learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a clinical data associate based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real clinical data associate resumes.

Research clinical data associate duties and responsibilities

Administer the execution of QC evaluation for data enter into the CTMS that lead to senior management exceeding client deliverable expectations.
Perform database audits as required to ensure FDA compliance.
Review SAS edits and data listings to produce data queries for clinical sites.
Ensure rapid identification of database errors by writing SAS code to validate clinical data.

Prepare your clinical data associate resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your clinical data associate resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a clinical data associate resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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