A famous social scientist tells you that the most important, though never totally successful, task in her research was to move from "total bewilderment" to "finding her feet" with the people she was studying. what can you say about this researcher?

I believe the answer is: Qualitative researcher

In their researches, qualitative researcher would rely on non-countable/numerical data rather than the numerical ones. Since there is no method to objectively measured it, the data would most likely came from observation and personal interpretation.