Two different versions of a correlation expansion for the A-body nuclear transition density required to evaluate the Glauber amplitude for inelastic proton-nucleus scattering are tested. Antisymmetrized oscillator wave functions, containing only Pauli correlations, are used to calculate the “exact” amplitude as well as various terms in the correlation expansions for the excitation of the 3 − (6.13 MeV) state of 16O and the 5 − (4.49 MeV) state of 40Ca. The leading term in both expansions, which ignores all correlations and corresponds to the Glauber theory version of the DWIA, leads to errors which are larger than present experimental errors, especially at large momentum transfers. In one version of the correlation expansion, due to Alkhazov et al., the first-order correction contains both elastic and inelastic two-body correlations and leads to satisfactory results. In the other version, used by Abgrall et al., the first-order correction contains only inelastic two-body correlations. In this case the first- and second-order corrections are needed to obtain accuracy comparable to that of the latest experiments.