Abstract: Data from psychological research can be roughly divided into three different types, they are cross-sectional data, time-series data and panel data. Methods for analyzing such data should be based on this research and the differentiation among them are briefly discussed. Methods for cross-sectional data in psychology are over depended on the linear structure and certain assumptions. Consequently, it ’s difficult to obtain benefits from those statistical methods when working with panel data in psychology. The lately developed functional data analysis method , which is mainly applied to panel data, has been mainly discussed in this research. According to the literature review, this method has been judged as a powerful new tool for psychological research, especially for time-series panel data from ERP、fMRI and developmental psychology experiments.

Key words: psychology research methods, cross-sectional data, time-series data, functional data analysis