I am relating 3 variables in a correlational research design; 2 out of the 3 studied relationships yielded unexpected results (no correlation instead of strong correlation), and I am going to discuss this by the fact of distance communication during the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. Is positivism the right research philosophy to adopt in this case? I know that positivism seeks universal laws and causal links, but no causal link is aimed at here.

I was thinking of critical realism, because of the space it gives for the researcher to interpret the data subjectively (as I am going to do, since I am proposing distance communication as the reason but it is just a probable reason actually).

Another issue is that I want to determine the type of the purpose of my study. According to Creswell's (2012), my research design is called "explanatory correlational design", because it is measuring degree and direction of relationships without giving predictive implications. However, I read in 2 references that correlational research is considered a descriptive, rather than explanatory research, because it only describes relationships without explaining why this happened (no causality can be concluded). So what can I consider the correlational purpose? Descriptive or explanatory?

I am at the final stage of my dissertation and need your help regarding the above 2 issues.