Community surveys have been widely used to investigate local residents' perceptions and behaviors related to natural resource issues. However, most existing community survey research relies on cross-sectional data and is thus unable to capture the temporal dynamics of community processes. Longitudinal analysis has received increasing interest in recent natural resource social science literature. Trend and panel studies are two typical approaches in longitudinal community survey research. Due to limited sampling frames, research design, and respondent attrition, longitudinal community surveys often involve both paired and independent observations across different survey waves. Using previous survey data on community responses to forest insect disturbance in Alaska as an example, this research note shows that the corrected z-test is a more appropriate approach to analyze partially correlated longitudinal data than conventional statistical techniques such as the paired and independent t-tests.