While Pandas’ test functions are primarily used for internal testing, NumPy includes a very useful set of testing functions that are documented here: NumPy Test Support.
These functions compare NumPy arrays, but you can get the array that underlies a Pandas DataFrame using the values property. You can define a simple DataFrame and compare what your function returns to what you expect.
One technique you can use is to define one set of test data for a number of functions. That way, you can use Pytest Fixtures to define that DataFrame once, and use it in multiple tests.
In terms of resources, I found this article on Testing with NumPy and Pandas to be very useful. I also did a short presentation about data analysis testing at PyCon Canada 2016: Automate Your Data Analysis Testing.